Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 359. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck. 

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to this week’s podcast. So happy to be here with you today. And for those of you who are new, welcome. We are thrilled to have you here. This is one of my favorite places to be with all of you. Besides EPC, of course, besides my one-on-one clients, this is also one of my favorites, because we get to have real conversations about how it feels to be a school leader, and that’s what this is all about. And today’s episode is going to be all about how it feels to be a school leader and how you want it to feel as a school leader.

I was talking with a client this week, and she was telling me how amazing her teacher pre- and post-conference meetings were going. So she’s been doing teacher evaluations and observation. She’s having the pre-meetings. She’s having the post-meetings. And she said, you know, through our last two years of coaching, the power of coaching has no bounds. She said, I’ve realized that the goal is to feel good, and you’ve taught me that. The goal is to feel good, to feel good about myself, to feel sufficient in who I am as a leader, to feel good about my school and my campus.

And she said, I was thinking about this in terms of teacher observations. In the past, I have focused on what they are doing, the actions they are taking. I would ask them questions. How are you doing? What are you doing that’s working? What do you think you did that was effective? What do you think you need to do next?

And I’m listening to her share this, and it’s all about doing. We think about doing, we think about what we’ve done, we think about what we’re going to do next.

We get up in the morning, we have a to-do list, we’re thinking about it as we’re doing morning routine, we think about it while we’re driving, we think about what we’re going to do when we get there, and then we start doing, and then we get interrupted from the doing, and then we get frustrated that we’re interrupted, and then we get back on track and we’re doing the things, and then at the end of the day, we think about what we didn’t do, and we make a list of what still needs to be done, and then we drive home and we think about that to-do list, and then we go home and we do.

We make dinner, we hang out with our friends, family, help the kids with the homework, get the baths, get the routines, they go to bed, and then we’re thinking about the doing for the next day.

We are obsessed with doing. It’s all about the action. We’re thinking about the doing. And that thought process, that mindset, that approach to school leadership, it comes with a certain kind of energy. Trying to create change, work, grinding, hustling, forcing, manipulating. 

And when I mean manipulated, I don’t mean with ill intent. I mean trying to handle something, manage it, control it, maneuver it, manipulate like it, make it malleable and try to shape it and form it into the outcome word we desire. There’s a lot of forcefulness or trying to control intention behind this type of doing.

I think of it as Olivia Pope energy. It’s handled, it’s done, no problem, I’ve got this, which is not a bad energy. I loved this character, by the way. So for those of you who are younger than me, this was a show called Scandal with Kerry Washington as the actor. 

She portrayed a very powerful, strong, boss, badass woman named Olivia Pope. And I loved this character. I watched this series not once, but twice all the way through. Her confidence, her courage, her boldness, her energy, her style. Oh my God, her style.

I have a funny story to tell you. I actually dressed up as Olivia Pope for Halloween while I was a principal at school. And I have to tell you this, even better yet, I’ll never forget this day. I dressed up as Olivia Pope. I had the perfect dress, perfect outfit. I dressed up and everyone’s like, who are you? And when I told the adults, they were like, oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely.

It was a Monday. We used to do Leopard Launch,  which was the entire school would gather outside and we would celebrate the kids.

We would do our school song, our school spirit or chant. We would do all of our little routine for the week. We had announced Leopard Spot winners. We would give announcements for the week, just a big celebration of the entire school and the parents would all stand around awake. We did it first thing in the morning. 

It was a Monday morning. I’m in my Olivia Pope. I’m getting the comments. Thank you so much. The kids did their little we called it the monster bash where we did dances to music. It was so fun after that. I held a principal’s coffee. I walk into the multi. This is a total side note guys But it’s fun story I walk into the multi and I’m feeling like a boss like just the clothing you wear sometimes can make you feel Like a different energy a different person I’m walking in, I’m hosting this principal’s coffee, and I’m a few years in, so I’m not brand new.

This is probably my fourth, fifth, sixth year sometime. And I had a parent who was not having it with me. They were a hater. It was pretty ugly, but it was that day that that person verbally attacked me in the multipurpose room with hundreds of parents watching on Halloween day in my Olivia Pope outfit.  I  was so glad that I chose that outfit because there was something in me that stood strong, that I felt my nervous system reacting. 

I could feel the visceral reaction. My heart was pounding. My blood was boiling. Like my face was probably flushed. I could feel it in my throat. I could feel all the feels, but I had this sense of calmness and strength and courage that I just, I needed, I needed in that moment, I was able to handle myself externally and to see that  I was okay, that I was going to be okay, that I could handle that moment.

It was a very Olivia Pope moment. So I use Olivia Pope energy because one, I think women can relate to it. Two, another term for this kind of energy is called masculine energy. It has nothing to do with being male or female. It has to do with the type of energy. It’s just a label. It’s can be in males or in females.

And I will say that there are many leaders in masculine energy because the energy is confident, courage, bold, courageous, it’s kind of like you’re fierce, you go for it, you’re direct, you try to create an outcome with sheer force, with sheer hard work and grit and grind.  So  we’re sold as women or men that the ideal approach to leadership is this.

This boss energy, this badass energy, this fixer, it’s done kind of Olivia Pope energy. Get it done. Right?  And look, I want to say outright, like, this is not bad energy. There’s not good energy or bad energy. There’s not a right way or a wrong way to approach school leadership. And I think of it as like in the movies, characters, they tend to have like one character trait.

So in the case of Olivia Pope, we see this character being courageous and brave and bold and making these big decisions and taking big risks and getting in danger and, you know, almost not sure how she’s going to get out of it, but she always gets out of it. She’s like the MacGyver of women. And but what we don’t see is that she always wakes up ready to go looking sharp in her perfect outfit perfect hair looking amazing feeling good the next day taking on the next big battle like there isn’t a ton of representation for the humanness of the experience right being so exhausted mentally physically emotionally getting the beat down like they show moments of that but because it’s a show it’s a movie or a it’s a series.

There’s always the main character triumphs, they overcome, and we want that when we’re watching it, that’s a part of the joy of the show, right? But what we don’t see is where it doesn’t work out in the end, or where the exhaustion wins out, or something happens and it knocks her to her knees, and she’s just down and out for a week, or she’s having a weekend where she’s in bed depressed, we don’t see that.

We see her getting magically recharged and is up for the next day. So we get into leadership and think, Oh, we should be able to come in with this big leadership energy and solve things like a boss and have everyone follow our plan and do what they need us to do and that it doesn’t impact us. 

To the point that we’re physically mentally emotionally exhausted or wiped out. We’re kind of sold this machine approach or robotic approach to leadership, right? And that’s where I feel masculine energy. When people speak of masculine energy, that’s what it is. It’s just a term that’s applied to the type of fuel driving our actions. It’s a mindset, an approach that we believe is the right way or the best way.

And here’s the thing about it. I have leveraged masculine energy most of my life. As a little girl, I was pretty feminine, but I was the firstborn and I was raised to be masculine in getting accolades and accomplishments, learning to play the violin, being in choir, being in orchestra, being in band, getting good grades. I was the drum major my senior year in marching band. Going to college, I learned how to leverage masculine energy in a way that really worked for me. I was like, oh, this feels powerful, this feels strong, I’m successful, I’m creating results.

So masculine energy is an absolutely necessary part of school leadership, and it works a lot of the time. It also can result, if we aren’t conscious or aware, it can create results without fulfillment. We think that we should always be strong, be resilient, big, bold energy, and we associate this kind of energy with title, status, power, influence. Like I’m the leader, I have a title. It’s my responsibility. That’s what leaders do. That’s how we should be. It’s who we should be. It’s how we should act.

But the only problem with this approach is when it doesn’t feel good. When you’re playing the part or being the part, but you’re not feeling the part. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel aligned for you. You come in and you’re doing, doing, doing, whether that’s driven by perfection or whether it’s driven by comparison, or whether it’s driven by fear of what other people’s opinions, or what your boss might say, or fear of getting fired, or fear of getting, you know, haters, fear of getting negative feedback, or public scrutiny. When it’s that kind of masculine energy, you’re pretending. 

It’s not really who you are. You’re pretending to be that, and it doesn’t feel aligned. It doesn’t feel good. It’s not invigorating. It’s depleting. It’s exhausting. It’s like getting a beat down, and then getting up and coming back in the ring and getting beat up over and over again by yourself or others, right?

When masculine energy is not working for you, it makes you feel inadequate and exhausted and insufficient. There is a place for doing because we cannot create outcomes without doing. We can’t sit here and meditate all day and visualize a happy school and sit in our comfy chair for eight hours and it magically happens. We can’t just be, exist, without doing. But there’s an energy that fuels the doing. So it’s about how you’re feeling when you’re doing what you’re doing and who you’re being when you’re doing what you’re doing.

So there’s the forceful, must do, have to, urgent, fearful, controlling, perfectionism, energy of doing things. And then there is a clarity, centered, purposeful, intentional, calm, desire, enjoyment, prioritized, confident, assured, done is better than perfect energy, where you are centered and calm and clear and confident and trusting that the action you’re taking is enough because it feels good, it feels aligned, it feels sufficient. You’re not rushing through your to-do list to prove to yourself that you’re sufficient. You’re walking insufficiency, fueling yourself doing the things.

So you can choose to be forceful and have this intense controlling octane of fuel, which is the masculine. I’ve got to control title, power, status, and yet the urge to control, to win, to have it all. It’s an all or none thinking if you’re only using that fuel. Or you can choose a more calm and clear and centered and assured trusting octane of fuel, which is the feminine, the trusting, the faith, the patience, the internal strength.

If you think about it, people who are spending all of their energy trying to control externally, trying to control other people, trying to control outcomes, trying to control what the community thinks, what their boss thinks, what their teachers are doing, what their students are doing and they can’t handle if it doesn’t go exactly the way they want it to because of the way it makes them look or feel, those are very fragile leaders. 

It ‘s like, I’m trying to keep all the plates spinning and as long as I keep all the plates spinning and I have control over these people and control over that person and control over what this person thinks and I’m doing, and I’m doing, doing, doing, and I’m looking the part, as long as all the plates keep spinning, I’m good. 

But you’re running around, spinning all the plates, making sure nothing falls, because if one plate falls, you shatter. Your identity shatters, your emotional state shatters, your confidence shatters, versus when there’s an internal strength where there is alignment and self-trust, self-control, self-maturity, self-ability to reflect.

It’s an internal strength, an internal ability and capacity to manage your thoughts, to feel your feelings without exposing them and reacting to them and projecting them onto other people. Feminine energy is about internal strength, and then the masculine energy is taking that internal strength out into the external part of you.

So the key to balancing this feminine and masculine energy, this forcing, controlling, doing, I call it doing energy and being energy. When you’re being versus what you’re doing, the key to this balance is by what feels good for you. I call these feel-good goals. The way to reach a goal is, is this feeling good? Is it not feeling good? Does this approach feel good? Does it feel aligned or does it not? I take action, this is my goal. I take masculine action, massive action, I do through the lens of being, who I am, through the lens of feminine energy.

So I look at what I want to accomplish and the tasks and the actions I need to take and do, but through the lens of certainty, calm, trust, faith, clarity, alignment. And when I do that, the actions are fueled with a different kind of octane, with sufficiency, with safety, with certainty, with trust, with clarity, with constraint, because I don’t have to get 200 things done to feel sufficient.

I can do the three things that are my priority and feel sufficient. Knowing there’s more to do, but not needing to do it right now for fear that my reputation will get broken and shattered or my feelings will get shattered or somebody’s opinion of me will get shattered.

So the feel-good approach is about focusing on what feels good, using it as a compass, makes it so simple. So full circle, back to the conversation I had with my client with her teacher observations, she shifted the way she asked the questions. She didn’t need another program. She didn’t need another evaluation system. She simply shifted the questions from what are you doing to how are you feeling? What felt good about the lesson? Where did you feel you were in flow? What part of the lesson felt amazing for you? What are you most proud of? What do you think your kids were feeling? When were they feeling good? I noticed this. Your kids were really feeling good at this part of it. They really did a nice job here. What felt good?

When you ask a teacher how they’re feeling and you make the goal to feel good is the path. That means you’re on track. If it feels good, you’re on track. If it’s feeling a little crunchy, if it’s not feeling really good, that isn’t a problem. That’s just an indication that we want to look at that aspect of our teaching and ask ourselves what would make it feel good? 

If that part, if the transition between a whole group to individual work or a whole group to partner work or whatever the transition is, if that transition felt a little crunchy, we just look at the transition part of the lesson. We don’t need to revamp the whole lesson or change who we are as a human being or as a teacher. What about that transition didn’t work? Was it how you handed out papers? Was it how they selected partners? Was it how they walked back to their desk? Was it they forgot to get their pencils? What little specific thing felt a little crunchy there? And what would feel good? Oh, okay, let me add that in, or let me just shift that a little bit.

Asking people how they feel versus what they did puts them inside of their bodies instead of in their mind thinking outside of their body. And here’s what’s so fascinating about this work. When you ask people what felt good, they actually already know. 

And what you’re doing when you ask the question is you’re empowering teachers to go internal, to think for themselves. What did feel good to me? I have to check in with myself. Versus teachers who, oh my gosh, they’re gonna ask me what I did and I’m gonna have to come in with defense plan, a protection plan to show them, here’s my strategy, here’s what didn’t work, here’s what I didn’t do, here’s what I’m gonna do. It’s not about what they’re doing as much as it is about the fuel driving the doing, who they’re being while they’re doing it, the energy they’re fueling their decisions and actions by.

So the feel-good approach, the goal is to feel good, to feel good as a leader, and for teachers to feel good as a teacher, so that students can feel good as students. And then it becomes very clear. It rises up to the surface and their insights change. It shifts because they’re not focusing on the doing as much as they’re focusing on the feeling. This feels good. This doesn’t. Let’s keep this. Let’s shift that. It makes being an instructional leader so much more simple, because you aren’t trying to be the expert, the guru. 

You don’t have to bang your head about what should their goal be, and how should they fix it, and what should I suggest. You’re asking them what feels good to you and what doesn’t. That’s your goal. The little crunchy part there that you need to change, that’s the goal, pure and simple.

Now, where the work comes in for you is allowing yourself to focus on what feels good and what doesn’t feel good, and making what doesn’t feel good feel good. That’s what we talk about in EPC. So you can go out right now, and you can start asking what feels good to teachers. You can apply that right now. But where it’s going to get a little crunchy for you is when it comes back to you. 

And if your capacity to lead this change in the way that you engage in instructional leadership, moving from doing to being and feeling, Your capacity to lead this change or this shift is going to work only to the capacity at which you’re doing it internally for yourself. That’s what EPC supports you in.

It’s gonna feel very counterintuitive. Your brain is going to be like, what are you doing? We’re not working hard enough. We’re not spending enough time on this. We’re not getting our to-do list done. You are so failing in all of the ways. Danger, danger. That is where we shift our energy, our leadership energy, our focus, and our priority from masculine down to the feminine versus feminine to the masculine. 

So it’s not about doing enough to become somebody, it’s about becoming that person now, being the person now, feeling it now, and then you do. It’s a flip. And it’s kind of a mind blip because it’s not how we’re trained to think. It’s not how we’re trained to do. It’s not the approach that we were told works.

So you can forcefully create results in your life. People do it all the time. But is that the way you want the experience of school leadership to feel? I have found that in my experience, the feel-good goals, they’re so much better. They feel so much better. 

They work better. It’s like you’ve tapped into a success formula that doesn’t even make sense. Because it feels easier, it feels better. It feels like you’re in flow and just so much good is happening. And you’re not overexerting, overworking, overscheduling.

Give it a try, the feel good goal, and join EPC when we open the doors in 2025, I can’t wait to meet you. Happy, happy Tuesday, have a great week and we’ll talk to you next week. Take good care, bye. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 357. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck. 

Well, hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, if you’re new, drop a five-star review, leave a message, let me know how you are, that you’re in my world, I would love to meet you and say hello. I just love the podcast, and I love this audience, and I love the impact that we are having as empowered principals. It’s outstanding.

Today’s topic is going to be a little bit different than something I usually speak on, but I think it’s important to discuss whether you are considering this idea right now or nearly in your future, or maybe it’s 20, 30, 40 years off, but it also could apply to deciding to leave education. So today’s topic is on retirement resistance. 

I was coaching one of my clients who’s worked with me for years, and she’s near retirement. We’ve been kind of dabbling in the conversation of retirement for quite a while, on and off, on and off, on and off. This year, she said to me, I’m finally ready. We talked about that. We celebrated it, and we talked about it, and we were reflecting on the journey from being a school leader into considering retirement and then not considering retirement and then going back and forth on if retirement’s the right thing, or if resignation is the right thing. So there was a whole conversation on retirement or resignation to go somewhere else and try something different. 

So I want to talk about something that I think is actually quite common, which is retirement resistance, or if you’re not at retirement age, you could apply it to resignation resistance. It basically means you desire to leave the current position you’re in. You want to move to another district. You want to move to another position. You want to retire altogether from education and either try something else or live your best retired life. There’s something that you’re desiring.

So what I have observed is that the institution of education, the job that we are in, I feel like as educators, there is something so fascinating about it because it feels so personal. Because there is such a conviction, and we have a very specific set of leadership values, teacher values, educator values. We have strong opinions. We have a lot of passion around students and teaching and learning and the well-being of our staff and our students and the community. 

We’re very committed to the work even when it isn’t serving us, even when we don’t feel good or we’re disgruntled, or we are feeling emotionally, or mentally unwell because of the pressure and the intensity of the job. But what I have found, and this could be true in other industries but I can only speak to my own industry. I have found it to be true that there is a level of commitment that’s so profound that it almost presents itself like an addiction. 

So hear me out. When you think about people, humans, we are motivated by how things feel to us, the emotional experience we have. We seek out pleasurable things. We try to avoid pain as much as possible, and we try to make things as easy as possible. That’s the motivational triad of the brain. Seek things for pleasure, avoid things that are painful, and make things as easy as possible. 

We want to experience as much pleasure and joy and happiness and delight and success and accomplishment, fulfillment, all of those things. We want to not experience anything on the negative end, the negative emotional end of the spectrum, the pain, grief, struggle, frustration, embarrassment, discouragement, anger. There’s a million words that we use to describe it. 

We’re either feeling good, or we’re feeling bad. We’re looking to feel good, or we’re not looking to feel bad. We’re trying to avoid that. Then we want things to be easy, flow, fun, simple. We want things to click.

So knowing that, what I have found to be interesting is what motivates humans. Let me put it this way. When you think about video games and how they’re designed, video games are designed for you to fail, fail, fail, feel bad, get frustrated, but then like double down, and I’m going to get this level. I’m going to do whatever it takes to pass this level. We get dug in and we get so tunnel vision into figuring it out. Then we do it. We get that little hit of success. It feels really good. It’s just a moment. Boom, we pass the level. Zing, zing, zing, celebrate, celebrate. 

Okay, now here’s the next level. Guess what? It’s a little bit harder, a little more challenging. Even though you just passed that level and you got one opportunity to celebrate and have fun, you got this little hit of adrenaline or dopamine, and now we’re back at it. So there’s 99% grind, 1% hit, then a little bit more discomfort, and then a hit. 

I feel like school leadership is a little bit addicting that way. We have a lot of days that feel hard and then we get that good day. We’re like, oh my God. I could do this forever. This is the best feeling in the world. It’s euphoric when we have a great day or a great week, or we’ve solved a problem, or we’ve helped a student or a teacher, or we hired somebody we just absolutely love. Whatever it is, there are things that just make us fly. We feel like we could fly, and we want to do it forever. We want that emotional experience forever. 

But as you know, every celebration, every emotional experience that we have as a school leader, it’s temporary. We get hard day, hard day, hard day, ooh, a little bit of a good day here, or even a neutral day, which feels better than a hard day. We’ll take it. It feels good. Then we have a really good day, and we’re like oh, I love this. I want to do more of this. Hard day, hard day, hard day, hard day, hard day, and then another good day. 

So this client of mine for the last three years has been hard, hard, hard, hard oh, a little good day. I love this. I want to do this for kids. We get so addicted to this rollercoaster of it’s really hard, but a good day. It’s really hard, but a good day. 

I want to offer something. I want you to notice when you look at your experience in school leadership, is it half good, half bad? Are you in balance with like yeah, there’s hard days, but there’s lots of good ones too? Or is it there’s a few more hard days, but there are plenty of good days? Or is it it’s actually mostly really hard, and I might have a little bit of good that gets sprinkled throughout? 

Because that is actually how we’re wired. It’s like struggle, problem solve. It’s hard. Then we get that little hit, and it carries us into the next celebration. But for some of us, it’s so far between that we haven’t even realized how long it’s been since we felt good, since we’ve been rested, since we feel sufficient. We feel accomplished. We feel productive. We feel helpful. We are fulfilled in our job. We’re content. We’re satisfied. We feel amazing about ourselves, about our staff, about our school. 

So notice, take a moment to notice. On the balance scale, are you feeling really balanced? Is it pretty balanced, or is it actually imbalanced, and you’ve just gotten used to this is the pattern. It’s mostly bad, and I get a little bit of good. I want you to notice that.

The reason I bring this up is that this feeling, this balance of feeling, it’s one of the aspects we look at when we’re making the decision to stay or to go. So if you’re near retirement, but you’re like well, but the kids. I’m going to miss the kids. There’s so much more to do. This is some of the things I’ve been hearing with my clients who are near retirement. But there’s so  much more to do. I wanted to accomplish this. I didn’t want to leave this unfinished. 

Here’s what I have to offer. That’s simply another way of the success addiction grabbing you, getting your attention. It’s like but wait, if you leave now, you won’t get to pass this level. But then oh, wait, there’ll be another level. Then you won’t get to pass that. Don’t leave now because there might be another good moment coming.

So we get on this roller coaster of like I need to stay. What about these kids? What’s going to happen? So notice that if you are at all thinking about resigning to try a new experience or retiring to have a completely different experience, what I want to offer is notice the balance or the imbalance. What is driving you to stay? What’s driving you to go? Okay.

Now, here’s the beautiful thing with my client who was teeter-tottering back and forth. Number one, her son called her out. She was telling him, and he’s like, “Mom, you know you’re going to have a great day. Then you’re going to be like I can do this for 15 more years.” He’s like, “Don’t do that to yourself. You’re ready. It’s time. You have been so committed to your job that you lack rest. You lack relaxation. I don’t know that you know how to relax.” So he was kind of calling her out on some of these things out of love, of course. 

Then a few days later, she runs into a friend of hers, a former colleague who had retired years before her. She had never seen this person again since retirement. They sat down, they talked, they ended up having a conversation, cup of coffee. 

Her friend asked her, what about you? Because my client was asking all about the retirement. How’s it going? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What do you do with your time? She said, “It’s great. It’s this and that. But what about you? What are your plans?” She’s like, well, teeter-tottering, right? Notice this. Notice why. Is it because you think there’s something good around the bend, something good around the corner? 

I’m not trying to talk you out of your job at all. But what I am saying is be honest with yourself about your reasons for considering retirement and the reasons for staying. If it’s to chase the intermittent win or that next dopamine hit, if that’s all it is, it looks like this. Oh, I want to see my school through. I just want this one thing that I’ve been working on. I want to see it to the next level. I want to see it become accomplished. Or I want to get my vision here. Or I just want to graduate this group of kids. 

The problem is there will always be a group of kids who promotes or graduates. There will always be a project that you’re undertaking or trying to see through. There is never a finish line. You call the finish line. You decide the finish line. 

What happens is we get so caught up in the trap of, you’ve got to just do this. You have to be the one. You can’t leave. You’ve got to stay. These kids need you. These teachers need you. This community needs you. it’s true. You’re amazing. But also, it also will live on far past your time there. Your legacy will live on. 

But these teachers and students and families, they grow up. They move on. They get other jobs. They go to different schools. They move in and out of communities. You cannot lock yourself into a position for life because there’s something more you want to accomplish, or there’s another little addiction hit that you want to feel or experience. 

One of the brilliant things that my client’s friend told her was, if you want to retire, but you’re nervous about being so used to being so busy and feeling really guilty about not working or not contributing or not being at your school, a lot of us don’t retire because we think we’re going to feel guilty or we’re going to have so much time. What are we going to do to fill up our time? 

This is what the friend said. It’s exactly what I would have said because it’s my exact sentiments. If you’re considering retirement or you’re considering a resignation to try something new, embody that version of you now while you’re still in the position. Get online. Look around. What would you do with your time? Plan it. Envision it. Imagine it. Let’s say you just can’t wait to sleep in. Practice sleeping in on the weekends. If you can’t wait to work out, start working out now. Maybe you do it on the weekends or maybe you do it once a week.

Start becoming the version of you that is already retired. Start prioritizing things that you would do. You want to join a book club. You want to take up pickleball. You want to do a dance class. You want to just read books and do nothing. Start doing those things now. 

At the very least, if you don’t have the energy or the focus or the capacity to do it now, plan for it. Here’s what my life would look like if I had every day available. I’d sleep in. I’d take a walk. I’d get a cup of coffee with a friend. I would go to water aerobics. I would be in a book club, or I would learn to play cards. Whatever you want. That’s the whole point. You take back agency over your life. You take back ownership of who you are. 

This job, it’s a beast. It will consume every ounce of you mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically. It will take and take and take. But what I see is that we’re a little bit addicted to those wins, to those hits. We never want to give that up because we feel guilty, or we’re afraid of what people will think, or we’re afraid we’re leaving somebody hanging. 

But the truth is this. You guys, I’ve done this. I had the same thoughts, the same fears. I resigned from my district of 22 years. It was such a hard decision at the time. I thought all of those worries and struggles and problems were going to come with me, and I was still going to worry about them, but I wouldn’t have the capacity to fix them. I couldn’t be further from the truth. 

What really happened when I resigned and started my company is that I had an entire new set of things to think about. I was thinking about starting this podcast and writing my book and learning how to market these coaching tools in a way that would support school leaders. 

I remember when I first resigned, I felt so guilty if I went to the grocery store during the week, like during a work day, quote unquote, if I ran an errand, or I was worried I’d be seen out in public. But I was like, wait a minute. I’m not even working for the district anymore. I’m an adult. Why am I feeling like a child who’s skipping school? That’s what it feels like. You go through these waves of guilt. 

I had to give myself permission like you are a grown woman. You can go to the grocery store on a Tuesday if you need to. No one’s controlling your life. It can feel in some cases, particularly site leadership, where you feel you’re under the control of the district leaders, of the policies, of the schedule, whatever. So it can feel so uncomfortable to retire or resign and be doing something else on a different schedule altogether. 

You’re going to have to work through like it’s safe. I have permission. It’s okay. This is my life. I’m the one in charge. I set the rules. I set the terms. I set the parameters of who I want to be. 

So if you’re considering retirement, if you’re looking at resigning and either getting out of education or trying something different in education or simply just trying a new school or a new district, you want to be planning for that now. You want to be thinking about it now. It’s almost November. You’re almost halfway there. It will come before you know it. You want to be able to start embodying what it feels like and envision who you will be as the version of you that has agency and control over your life and is no longer addicted to the very small hits that come with the happiness. 

Now, for those of you listening to this podcast and you’re like I’m so happy. I love my job. Of course, this isn’t directly for you, but I will say this. Do notice the dopamine chase. If you are chasing dopamine hits, notice it. 

Here’s what we do. When something good happens, we feel really good about ourselves, and we identify it as a good leader. When something bad happens, we feel terrible personally, and we make it something about us personally, and we tell ourselves, I’m not a good leader. This isn’t working. Notice the all-in-one thinking, notice the dopamine chase, and notice if you’re in resistance to a new experience, a new lifestyle. 

If at all you feel trapped, if at all you feel like education’s all you know, and you can’t imagine your life outside of education, please start imagining your life outside of education. This is a podcast to empower principals, but part of empowering you is reminding you that you are the one in control of your life. You have agency over your life. You get to make the rules, the parameters. You decide how many hours a day you work, how many hours a week you work, what district you work for. 

You can work hard for your district. You can work hard and love your job, but not if it’s consuming you, not if you feel afraid to leave. That’s not healthy. 

So contemplate this over the week as you’re listening to the podcast, as you’re thinking about your week, create awareness around why you love your job and are you dopamine chasing or do you genuinely feel a sense of balance, a sense of agency, a sense of empowerment over your life even though you are in school leadership. That’s the balance I help people with. 

We need people in school leadership, but we need them balanced. We need them to feel empowered. We need them to feel like they have agency over their life and some level of control over their time and how they spend it and when they say no and not just chasing the one good day every few weeks or the one good week every few months.

If you know somebody who’s in education who is considering retirement or isn’t happy at all, and they’re wondering why they feel so trapped, please share this podcast with them. They don’t understand why they feel so addicted to the job, why they feel so resistant to quitting or resigning or retiring. This is why. It takes a well-managed mind to be able to find the joy in all of the days and to manage those hard days and to not make it mean something about us.

Something to consider. Please share this. If you know anybody who is struggling or thinking of retirement but on the fence or thinking of moving up, promoting, resigning, getting a different job, any kind of transition they’re looking for, share this with them. Share the podcast with them. Share this episode particularly or the podcast in general because we want to help people make empowered decisions and to feel a sense of control and agency over your life. 

Your job should not be dictating every aspect of your life. If it feels that way, it really is time to reconsider if you have any resistance to resigning, to promotions, to a new change, or to retirement. So with that, have a beautiful week, and I will talk with you all next week. Take good care of yourselves. Bye. 

Hey empowered principal. If you enjoyed the content in this podcast, I invite you to join The Empowered Principal® Collaborative. It’s my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to experience exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. 

Look, you don’t have to overwork and overexert to be a successful school leader. You’ll be mentored weekly and surrounded by supportive likeminded colleagues who truly understand what it means to be a school leader. So join us today and become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country. Just head on over to angelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more and join. I’ll see you inside of The Empowered Principal® Collaborative. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader. 

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode  355. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck. 

Angela: Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to today’s episode. I have a very special guest for you. Her name is Dr. Jamay Fisher. She and I have just recently contacted one another and felt like we became friends overnight. It was sensational to meet. 

We actually met, and I’m going to have her tell you a little bit more of this story, but we actually met through a different coaching program. We were both clients of a different coaching program, a business building coaching program. She found me in that program, and we connected. I loved her work and her message so much. It is such a valuable conversation that we are about to have to share with you guys today. 

I asked her if she could please be on the podcast because I think this message, this conversation will stimulate some really rich thoughts about the upcoming school year and just development as a leader.  So Jamay, welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast.

Jamay: Thank you, Angela. I’m really excited to talk more with you about this specific topic. Like you mentioned, we talked about a lot of different things, but we both really care about educators, and we really care about leaders in education specifically and the industry. We especially connected on that because I come from the world of education too. 

Currently, I advise experts on best practices in leadership public image. I have been in this work for a long time, and I come from the classroom just like the rest of us and we really care about education. So we’re going to talk all the things today about leadership and public image and all of that. 

Angela: Yes, and I love her unique niche in terms of the field of education. So definitely, you have the teaching background, you have the leadership background, you have administrative background. What’s interesting about the work that you do, and you can talk more about this, but what I love about your work is your work at the university level in teaching educators the art of PR. So can you just speak a little bit more about that aspect of your professional work? 

Jamay: It is definitely an art indeed. I did not come into education thinking I wanted to work in PR. I actually came into education because I wanted to leave PR. I worked on Capitol Hill. I come from the world of politics. My first degrees are in political science, and I worked on Capitol Hill for two members of Congress, one senator and one member of the House, both representing the state of Minnesota.

I loved it. I loved being in PR. I love being in press and handling the media. After a reelection scare, I wanted something that I wanted to do that was also just as exciting as working on the Hill. I decided that was education. So the member of Congress I worked for was a science teacher for St. Paul Public Schools before he ran for Congress. I had a lot of friends who are in education and educators. So that’s why I decided to be an educator too.

So I kind of came into education because I wanted to leave the world of PR. But as PR professionals know, once people find out you do PR, they think you’re going to do PR all the time. 

Angela: Yes.

Jamay: But it kind of was part of what I did because, I mean, I have a degree in elementary education and middle grade social studies. So when I went into teaching, I had the press in my room all the time, and I was interviewing at newspapers and there were always tours in my classroom. I always knew how to manage my students very well. We all knew what to do when the media showed up. It was like so exciting. I just thought everybody did it.

But come to find out because of the way I went about it, they wanted me to work at district headquarters. So I worked at district center, and I developed like superintendents, cabinet members, and things like that and the broader public about PR. I was doing coaching at that level. That’s what led me into getting the doctorate and doing this work at universities too. 

So that’s what brought me into this work. I am so committed to, especially in our current times. Some of us grew up when social media was not as big as it is now. The media is still the media, but it operates in a different way. I read an article this morning about teachers and educators and even members of education and leadership who worked in cabinet who lost their jobs because they did not necessarily know how to manage the media well.

I think that as educators who are committed to helping educators grow and being leaders in our own space, it’s important for us to know how to manage the media the best we can. I don’t think we’re typically taught that, so. 

Angela: Definitely not taught that. I agree with you. I think that media in general, particularly social media, is an entirely newer layer that has come into our schools. We have students with phones and access to media. We have teachers and staff, and we have families.

There is always a presence of social media on our campuses, which brings a new element into our leadership understanding and the skillset required of us to navigate that. 

I know I have been impacted by social media. Something as simple as like the newspaper, the local newspapers are now electronic. They have blogs, they have comments and opinion sections where people can go in anonymously or not and communicate and speak their opinions regarding you or your school or a staff member.

So there is an additional layer to be thinking about in social media. So tell us more about some of the teachings that you do with your students at the university level in terms of ideas, tips, strategies for them to think about as they’re entering into the field of education. 

Jamay: Yeah, so really when you really get focused on how you want to be, not only in your school, but we’re public employees, most of us. Even if you work in a private institution, you’re still kind of public. 

Angela: You’re serving the public, yeah. 

Jamay: We have a public image. You don’t have to craft your public image. It’s going to happen to you regardless if you do it or not. But if you craft it, it makes everything easier for you. So this is what I teach students in my public and my private practice. It really helps with making student outcomes easier, interacting with family, even moving around the profession. You get more power regarding how you negotiate contracts and the offers you get as educators.

When you specifically craft your leadership public image, it just makes it easier for you. I have to personally admit when I came into education, even though I come from the world of PR, I never really thought of investing in my own PR or my own leadership image. It’s just something that I naturally did. So I never really invested in it per se. But just like others, like we just kind of take on what the organization or the district is doing for their PR, which I think is important. We’re entities of that organization. 

But I knew as I went into the classroom and I had more media, I wanted to  help people beyond like the metrics of what the district counted. So that meant I needed to create an image. Like I wanted to help the profession writ large. So I knew at that point that I needed to create a leadership image.

This is what I teach my students too. I think we need to know about crafting an image because it is a personal preference. You don’t have to craft a leadership public image if you don’t want to, it’s all about preference, but as long as you know your reason why. Your image will be crafted. 

Image is like, basically when I think of leadership, public image in the world of education, it’s like reputation on steroids. So when you craft it on purpose is reputation on steroids. We all have a reputation regardless if we focus on it or not. But focus on it, it just makes things easier. 

This is sort of what I teach my students. I teach them from a couple of different lenses about how to do it. I think I have them first think about okay, think about your favorite like principal in your district or outside of your organization or your favorite superintendent. Like what makes that person great? Not only are they creating amazing student outcomes, I mean, of course they are, but what really makes them like so cool and so great? Think about that. I think that’s sometimes a great place to start.

Angela: Yeah, that is. I loved what you said that your image is being crafted whether you are doing it with intention and with consciousness or not. Because we are public figures, we do have a public image. We have a reputation. What I love about your work is that it gets really specific about the intentionality and the crafting of how to do that.

What I teach in EPC and the Empowered Principal® Collaborative is establishing your identity, how you self-identify. I think you and I were talking about this in our last conversation was, you first have to create your own identity. How do you identify as a school leader professionally? How do you identify personally? 

I think you and I can discuss this. My take on this would be to be in alignment with your identity as a person so that you’re not creating some false persona of who you want people to see you as an image, but being that person and being in alignment with that so that your image is actually you. 

Jamay: Exactly. That is really critical. The work that you’re doing with your leaders is really critical, and that’s definitely where to start. Then when you think about because that’s just going to help you create better student outcomes. It’s going to help you not have burnout and recruit better teachers. 

But in terms of public image, I’ve worked with a lot of superintendents and people who have really big images. It’s really important, even for our teacher leaders, because I was a teacher leader doing this, right? Think about our associations. Think about who you are. That’s the work you do with your educators. But then think about your association because a leadership brand image, one of the first things you should do or one of the things you should do is create your associations. 

So we’ll help you withstand turbulence in the profession as things change. As we know in the media, a lot of superintendents, teachers, and districts have a lot of turbulence in the media. So if you create strong associations, it will help you withstand turbulence in the profession. 

How I teach this is I think about educators who write op-eds. Think about where you’re putting the op-eds and what you’re saying. What outlets are you submitting op-eds to? One of the things that I teach my leaders in my public and private practice is like okay, where are you presenting? Which conferences? Just not anywhere, but on purpose based on what you’re teaching. Which, Angela, what you teach is knowing who you are. 

Angela: Yes.

Jamay: Are you presenting or are you publishing op-eds and outlets that reflect who you truly are? Or are you coming off as, quote-unquote, opportunistic? People kind of see that. Another example in education we use in terms of publishing is the ASCD magazines, like the Educational Leadership ASCD magazine is a very reputable publication. You might get a publication there or you might get an interview. 

You’re doing this because you have to know your big why. Like, why are you doing this? Most of the time people in education create leadership brand images because they want to make a bigger difference in the profession outside of immediately what they’re doing in their school. So that’s one way I think about creating a leadership brand image and how I teach it too. So. 

Angela: Yeah, that’s why I feel like our work that we do, it’s in conjunction with one another. It’s in combination because I cover leadership, right? So I’m doing, here’s how to be a new leader. Here’s how to approach situations. Here’s how to time manage, plan, balance. I’m trying to teach them that identity and stepping into their empowerment. I love this content because it’s so specific but yet it’s so critical because I do think, and I’ve had this experience personally. 

I wish I had had you as a mentor back 10, 15 years ago when I was a principal, but it matters. What people think of you matters. If you’re out of alignment with who you are, or if you are playing principal by day and like, I don’t know. It’s not aligned to you personally, like you’re one human. So.

Or if somebody misconstrues and now there’s a perception that isn’t you, isn’t in alignment with who you actually are, even that is something to have to negotiate, to navigate through because you have to deal with people’s misperceptions of your personality, your persona, your image. Like you said, navigate those storms. 

I have found personally and with my clients, the best way to navigate through the storms, and you’ll have them because you’re a leader. You’re a public figure is alignment. It’s knowing yourself so deeply that you tether yourself in what is true for you, where your values are, where you stand and owning mistakes. We’re human. It’s not to say you’re going to wipe your image squeaky clean for the public. It’s to own our humanness. I’m sure you have ways that you teach this.

But what speaks to me is you’re not here to avoid public comment, scrutiny, or misunderstandings. It sounds to me like you’re asking people to look at their image as a part of their job and craft it proactively knowing that, and those associations. That’s something I hadn’t thought of before. I appreciate that input because that is a part of image.

But you’re doing this proactively, but to strengthen who you are and grounding yourself in certainty so that when the storms hit, you are tethered during them. 

Jamay: That’s one element of it. So going back to creating these other associations in higher ed. Let’s use higher ed as an example. Each state in each region has their own like whatever associations, but let’s think about an example in higher ed, and that might be Harvard. So when people think of Harvard, they think of excellence, like the best in class, the gold standard. So when families or the public, they know Harvard, but when they meet you, they don’t know you. 

So let’s say, okay, they know Harvard, and they know what Harvard represents, but they don’t know you. So when they get to interact with you, you might have like your degree on the wall, which would say Harvard. Or they find out from your resume or your CV that you went to Harvard. So they create an association. Oh, Harvard represents like best in class. Oh, this person must be an excellent educator. So they associate you with excellence.

That goes back to where you’re putting your op-eds and where you’re showing up if you’re writing, like it’s a creation of association. They may not know you as an educator, like families or other people in the profession, but when they see your association, it’s about being intentional. Then putting things on repeat, not just doing it once. Not just going to Harvard and saying I tick that box, I’m done. But then putting it on repeat and sharing it with the public and then evaluating it through like inquiry or action research. 

I would say this is one thing that Angela is good at too. That’s why I think your work is so important, Angela, is because you help people with like inquiring about their profession outside of their institution. Like, I think that it’s important for educational leaders to seek like mentorship or guidance or advising outside their district resources because their district resources is very focused on the district. 

But when you want to craft a leadership public image, you need to think about okay, how can I impact my own practice and the profession outside of just what the district is doing and then putting it on repeat and sharing it. So that is the other thing I think that is important to teach when we’re doing the work on public image. 

Angela: Yes. This aligns to my message on in order to be, I feel like this is the equation that maximizes empowerment for school leaders. It’s your identity then creates an influence. You could add image into this too. Like your identity and your image creates influence, which creates impact and that creates a legacy. 

Jamay: Yes. 

Angela: So like, if you’re a leader who really strives to be the top of class, make the biggest difference, you have to identify as a leader. You go internal and identify yourself and then you create this image, and you would work with Jamay to build up that PR and that image of where you’re at and where you want to be. That builds up your level of influence, which generates impact. 

That is where you craft a legacy that goes so far beyond who you are today at this particular position in this particular school. You’re crafting an image for your life, your career. The ripple effect of that and the impact you’re creating, it has no bounds. 

It’s limitless because you are expanding your reach. You’re expanding your image, right? To not only be, I’m the principal at this school right now. I’m an empowered educator whose legacy and image continues to evolve and expand throughout the course of my entire career. 

Jamay: Exactly. That’s a commitment to the profession and the career. Like a lot of educational leaders can’t withstand turbulence because first of all, they haven’t created a series of association. It’s just not one. Let’s say you didn’t go to Harvard. You don’t have to go to Harvard. You could do anything you want, but it has to be a series of associations, and you have to put it on repeat. 

That’s where it’s a lot of distractions, especially as leaders. We get pulled in a lot of directions. So it’s important that we put our image on repeat. It helps us to withstand the turbulence that might come up in an organization or like just in life in general. You can withstand it better when you put it on repeat, you share it, you make more associations. 

I think one thing that I noticed too, a lot of people don’t do this, clearly Angela and I are fans of doing this, but a lot of educators in leadership like who are like teacher leaders or licensed admin, some of them worry about giving up their successes now. They worry that they’re going to lose what they’ve already done. So they decide that they don’t want to grow an image because images grow over time. Like it’s an ongoing associations and it evolves, everything in the universe changes.

So people are worried okay, I’m just going to stay at this school. I’m going to stay in my little zone, and I’m not going to do anything more because I’m worried that I’m going to lose successes, the success that I’ve created. But one thing that we know about leadership studies in general, especially creating a public image in educational leadership is the more you are intentional about your action research and the more you are doing this on repeat and sharing, you actually get clearer and clearer, and you grow your impact. 

Angela: Yes, that is definitely an important point. You can stay at a school. You can stay in a position. It’s not about like growing in terms of like climbing the corporate ladder per se or like running around and doing as many positions as possible to like rack up experience. 

It’s less about that and more about I call it the deeper work, like the under the surface work where it is refinement and nuance and detail and growing and exploring and expanding ourselves, whether you stay in a position or whether you grow. Staying in a position because you’re afraid is different than staying in a position because you’re taking it to the next level.

So your image could be a person who stayed in an organization for 10, 20, 30 years, but did you continue to evolve that organization and contribute to that organization and to expand your ability to lead and to leverage and to inspire people throughout that organization for the duration of your tenure, whether it’s two years or 40 years, right? 

Jamay: Yeah, exactly. Doing that is what makes you grow it. You get clearer and clearer the more you grow your image and the associations you make because you’re making trade-offs. Angela, you address a lot of matters in burnout. A reason some people have burnout is because they’re not clear about their associations and their trade-offs. 

Angela: Can you say more about that? 

Jamay: It’s always about, okay, I’m going to stop doing this because I want this to happen instead. So kids are always going to learn. You don’t have to create a public image for kids to learn if you’re doing your job really well. Kids are going to learn. But people come to you and they ask you to do things that are not necessarily related to the kind of impact and change you want to make in the profession.

So you will have to say no to that. For me personally, that was one of the harder things I had to learn in terms of growing my own image as an academic and a mentor advisor in the world is that I can’t do it all, but I wanted to make a bigger impact. So how can I make a bigger impact? That’s different for everyone, but it is constantly a matter of trade-offs. So doing things that will help you help more people in the industry, so. 

Angela: Yeah, no, that’s constraint. I think constraint actually is one of the tickets to success because we spread ourselves a mile wide and an inch deep versus like I’m going to hone this skill, or I’m going to hone this area of expertise, right? Doctors, general doctors, right? Then there are like specialists, and they can take that work to a level that when you’re trying to learn it all, you’re not going to be able to be a specialist in that area. 

So that’s another thing to consider in terms of your image and your PR stance is like, are you going to be an expert in a particular area of education? Are you going to be somebody who’s like done a breadth of experiences? You’ve tried a lot of seats on the bus. 

There’s no right or wrong way to develop your image. It’s the image that you want to create, but it’s about being conscious and intentional with that creation of that PR image and developing it in a way that continues to serve yourself, your organization, and the greater good, right, of education at large.

Angela: Yeah, and for those people in your audience who have written dissertations or considering writing dissertations, this is kind of when you think about it in terms of like higher ed and writing a dissertation. Okay, so when you write your literature review, even if you’re doing action research in a school or inquiry in a school and you’re not doing it for a dissertation but you’re doing it for professional development. Like there are certain things you include in the lit review and certain things you don’t include in a lit review. 

So let’s say you’re working on like teacher retention. So you’re trading off writing about teacher retention versus like standardized testing. We are in the industry of helping kids learn. So like whatever you do, like you’re still going to help kids learn at the end of the day, but you’re just focusing on, and this is for leadership public image too. Like if you want your expertise to be on teacher retention, you might not show up on an interview related to like standardized testing, for example. So it’s just a really always a thoughtful, intentional choose this or this. 

Angela: Yes, can I switch gears a little bit for a moment? Because I think we talked about this last time we spoke as well, and shifting gears from like the personal identity and the personal image and what you’re crafting for yourself and your legacy in terms of your career. Thinking about how you craft the image of the school you’re working for. 

So I work with a lot of principals or perhaps superintendents who are listening, crafting an image for their organization, whether that’s at the site level or the district level. Do you work with people on that topic?

Jamay: I do, and I think they go hand in hand. 

Angela: Yes. 

Jamay: So they do go hand in hand. you want to definitely think about like your school improvement plan, like your SIP, or your like strategic plan for the district in terms of how you, the matters of public image that you’re working on. So they definitely feed into each other. So let me make sure I answer your question.

But yes, I think these things all work together. I think they, I believe that as educators committed to the profession that they should be in accord. So I think that they need to inform each other because that’s how you excel with the community members, with like creating like strategic plans. It’s kind of how you get things done in the district too. When you think about, okay how can I craft this strategic plan? I’ve done strategic planning for school districts and many of your listeners have. So how can I craft this strategic plan in a way that aligns to the values of this particular community? 

So it’s similar. It’s crafting your own personal PR is similar to the work you do at the district level. It’s just thinking about it in a broader way. That’s all. 

Angela: It makes it feel doable and aligned, right? So it’s like, if I’m crafting and doing this work at an individual level, I’m going to expand that into the organizational level because that way you’re not trying to craft two different messages or two different kinds of images.

I have been working with people on we’ve been hearing in the industry that there is a shortage, right? There is a teacher shortage. It’s hard to hire staff. I’m coaching people to stop telling themselves that because that is actually when you keep telling yourself, there’s nobody out there who wants the job. There’s not enough people or there’s not any good people. That’s the experience you end up creating for yourself. 

So you want to be cautious about how you speak about incoming people. There are people graduating all of the time. There are people moving all of the time. One of the things we’re working on, and I think your work would really expand this message to schools out there, we need to market our image, our brand per se, to the people who want to work at our school.

If we want to attract high quality teachers or new assistants or paraprofessionals or maintenance staff, whoever you’re hiring, anybody, we want to share the strengths of our school and the image of our school in a way that makes people more interested in wanting to learn more and wanting to work with us.

Because our brand isn’t just about who we are. Our brand is about our team and the culture of our school and our values in the organization and what’s in it for people. Why should I apply to this school or this district? Would you agree that is part of image as well? 

Jamay: It is. Not only, like you said, it’s our own individual leadership image, but how is it complementing the district? What you focus on, you get more of. So if you’re talking about the lack of XYZ, the lack of like teachers in the profession or hiring, you’re going to get more of that. 

It’s also okay, what can we control? Getting back to focusing on like empowerment, the core of your work, and how can we be empowered around this instead of outsourcing a broader narrative? Like not saying I don’t believe that we should be Pollyanna about certain things, but what we do focus on, we get more of. So if you want to focus on a certain lack, you will create more of that lack.

So how can we make, how can I, as a leader, when I’m out like writing op-eds, doing ASCD work, presenting at international and national conferences, how can I contribute to the image of the organization I’m affiliated with? So how is my work complementing the district? 

If I’m going to conferences and I’m constantly talking about how there is a lack of talent, is that really helping me or the district? It’s not. How can we focus on like what we can control instead of outsourcing instead? So. 

Angela: Yes, yeah, no, that is so great. I think when you are intentional with crafting an image, a PR image for yourself and perhaps for your school, that is the conduit through which you communicate your identity, your school’s identity, your district’s identity about this is who we are. This is what we value. This is our approach. These are our kids. This is what we highlight. This is what we focus on because I believe at the end of the day, your image, your branding, your personal, what people think about you, it all comes down to the energy behind you. 

What you believe about yourself, what you believe about staff and students, what you believe about the work that you’re doing. The more empowering thoughts that you think about yourself and your image, and you have thoughts about the public and they have thoughts about you, right? This is that dance of image and public relations. It really comes down to the energy exchange between you and the public. 

Jamay: Right, exactly. Because we are representatives, I believe in my work. I think when you affiliate yourself, that goes back to associations. When you are associated with a certain district, you’re also associated with their strategic plan, even though you are growing this complimentary leadership image for your own professional life. I think it helps your professional life. Angela would agree, but it should be parallel. 

Because if it’s in contrast, that’s where problems start. That’s where you might lose your contract or you don’t create advancement in your district or in the profession because you’re out of alignment. That was the news story I read in the paper this morning about educators who have an image that’s not an alignment of their organization. It’s a relationship. So we want that relationship to be complimentary. If we’re focused on like a shortage of what the narrative is around the shortage of teachers, that’s what we’re going to create more of. 

Angela: Yes, definitely. I just want to reassure you guys, just as a side note here, there are people who want to work for you. They want to work for your school. The more you see how amazing your school is and you focus on its strengths and you speak to those strengths, you will attract people who want to be at your school, who desire to support, whether they’re support staff or certificated staff, there are people out there who want to work. So keep that in mind. 

I have been coaching principals on getting those positions filled before day one. I have been so impressed at their belief and trust and faith in the process and it’s working. So just, if you’re out there and you’re listening to this and you’re frustrated about hiring, just know like, think about your image. What image are you portraying to the public, to your community about what it’s like to work at this school, what it feels like to work at this school, the benefits of working at this school, right? 

It really comes down to how people feel, how they feel about you, how they feel about the district, the culture of the district. I really think this work is so essential. Jamay, I don’t feel like this is a conversation schools are having, but I do think it is one of the missing puzzle pieces about its image, but below that, it’s about how we feel. Like image is about how one feels about themselves, about how other people feel about us. You said relationship, and I think that’s the word here. It’s the relationship you have with yourself and others and the community at large.

Is there any final thoughts or words of wisdom or insight that you can share with these site and district leaders that are listening to the podcast today? 

Jamay: I believe we covered everything. Angela and I could talk about this forever, but that’s what PR is, right? It is relationships. It’s a public relationship. It’s the relationship, not only like Angela mentioned, first of all, any relationship we have with anything is first of all about the relationship we have with ourselves. 

So first you’re thinking about the relationship with yourself and then thinking about your associations and relationships, what matters outside of you and how these certain things become like circumstances. Like a so-called teacher shortage, that can become a circumstance if you only focus on the right thing, like focusing on the right things and helping kids learn and growing our image and impacting the profession that way is the work that we’re committed to. So I think we’ve covered everything. This is so exciting. 

Angela: I know you and I could probably talk for hours, but if the listeners want to learn more about your work or reach out or contact you, what’s the best way for them to do that? 

Jamay: I’ll keep it easy. I will just go to Instagram. My Instagram handle is JamayFisher, that’s J-A-M-A-Y, Fisher, F-I-S-H-E-R, and that’s where you can find me. I also have there where I have my academic papers written for the research at universities I’ve done. I have public pieces written like an ASCD, for example, in leadership. Just I would love to start a conversation with anyone who’s interested. So that’s where to find me.

Angela: Yeah, and we’ll drop some links in the show notes for people to get direct access to Dr. Jamay and her work. We’ll put her Instagram handle in the show notes as well so that you guys can just click and have immediate access to her and her work.

I really hope that at some point you and I can do a collaboration, whether that’s a webinar, a training, a conversation, or developing some kind of process for people, because I think our work blends so beautifully together. Your expertise plus my expertise, I think it just up-levels the work that our school leaders are doing and supports them at just a deeper level. 

Jamay: Thank you, I cannot wait. 

Angela: We will be talking more in the future. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being on the podcast. It’s such a pleasure to have met you and to now call you a friend and to collaborate with you again in the future. It’s going to be a lifetime of work together. Thank you so much. 

All right, everybody, that’s a wrap. Have a wonderful week. Enjoy this podcast. if this resonates with you or with somebody that you know, if you would please share this podcast link out with your fellow colleagues, we would really appreciate that. Because our goal here is to support as many school leaders as possible and to expand your reach, your legacy, your impact to a limitless number of students and the lives of their families for this moment on.

So please feel free to share this with anybody who might enjoy this conversation. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you guys next week. Take good care. Bye. 

Hey, empowered principal. If you enjoyed the content in this podcast, I invite you to join the Empowered Principal® Collaborative. It’s my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to experience exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. 

Look, you don’t have to overwork and overexert to be a successful school leader. You’ll be mentored weekly and surrounded by supportive likeminded colleagues who truly understand what it means to be a school leader. So join us today and become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country. Just head on over to angelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more and join. I’ll see you inside of the Empowered Principal® Collaborative. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

 Hey there, empowered principals, listen up. I have a very special, very time sensitive offer. I will be hosting a three part series called Flip the Fall Dip. Look, we’re all tired. We’re all exhausted. It’s only the beginning of October. We feel burned out and there’s so far to go. I know the feeling. The honeymoon is over and we’re fatigued.

I’m going to show you how you can turn this around and change the trajectory of the fall experience this season. I don’t want you guys feeling depleted, feeling discouraged, feeling like you’re never going to make it. That’s not the case. We’ve got your back.  Please sign up. It starts today. It’s at noon.

Flip the Fall Dip.  It is free for members who are in the Empowered Principal Collaborative and it’s  given to you at the magical price if you’re not a member of EPC for $111 for all three sessions. So join us today. I’ll see you there. I can’t wait to support you. Have an amazing day and we’ll see you at Flip the Fall Dip.

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 353. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck. 

Well hello, my empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. So happy to be here with you today.

And I want to welcome you to October. October during the school year is exhausting. I am not going to sugarcoat it. It is the month where we enter into the fall dip. We have been riding on tons of adrenaline from July through August into September and we hit October and we are exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally.

I work with clients all across the country, I see the dip happen every year, I am calling it out now because it is the beginning of October, and if you start to experience the fall dip, or perhaps it has already started for you, for your staff, your students, your families, when you start to see energy waning, you see attitudes shifting, you see people’s moods adjusting, you see the fatigue people are dragging, they may start to vent or complain a little bit, you might not feel the excitement and enthusiasm and energy that you did in the beginning of the year.

You are not going to perhaps feel that people are as committed or that they are not tuned into their problem-solving potential. We slip out of empowerment when we are tired. At least I know I do. I have seen it in my clients. I have seen it in staff and students. When we are exhausted, whether it is mental, physical, or emotional exhaustion, we slip out of our empowerment. We slip out of belief that we are strong, we are capable, we are happy, we are problem solvers, we are successful, we know what we are doing.

Either we slip into some frustration and doubt and uncertainty, we feel overwhelmed, or we might slip into the feelings of disempowerment where the job is happening to me and this teacher said that, and my colleague did this, and this parent sent this email, and the kids are like this, and the district office is doing this, and all of it is happening to me, and we step into disempowerment where we feel out of control, we feel like things are happening to us instead of happening with us or for us, and that also can happen when we are tired.

So we are in the beginnings of, or maybe you are already in it, the fall dip. So if you are on Facebook and you are not in EPC, I have a public Facebook group, non EPC Facebook group called the Empowered Principle. You can be in that group. I am in there. I am posting, I put Facebook lives up and videos just to keep you going, keep the momentum going. We are having the fall of fun over there. So we want to keep energy high, keep your spirits high.

But really this is the time of the year you have to manage your brain, manage your emotions, and manage your fatigue because you need that capacity to be able to hold space for all of the other adults on campus who might not have the emotional regulation or the emotional maturity or the emotional bandwidth tools that you have here on this podcast, okay? So you need to really dive into this work, emotional regulation, physical regulation, mental regulation, managing your thoughts, managing your emotions, being able to process them so that you can hold space for other people who are learning these skills. Okay?

Now, with that said, if you are struggling in any way, shape, or form, the good news is that the doors for EPC, The Fall Dip session, are opening. So the doors are open for a very brief time. If you want to slip into EPC between October 1st and November 1st, jump on in. We have got your back. Okay?

Today I would like to talk about three different hats that you wear, three different identities that you embody as a leader. The first one you know about, it is the most obvious one, because it is leadership. You are a leader, right? As a school leader, you are a decision maker. You guide others, you inspire others, you have influence to create impact. You are building a legacy. Whether you understand that or not, whether you are consciously doing it or not, with intention or not, you are building a legacy.

People will remember you for being a school leader. You get to decide what that narrative looks like. You get to decide. You get to create the script. You are the main character of your movie and you are the main character as a school leader and you are writing the script of what it looks like and how it feels and the impact that you have as a leader. So when you think about yourself as a leader and you have your leadership hat on, there are many aspects to that identity, to the leadership aspect of your identity.

So as a leader, you really step into the role of a visionary. You create the vision with your mind, your heart, and your soul. As a teacher, you are not necessarily creating a school-wide vision. You might be creating a classroom vision. But as a leader, you are stepping into the role of visionary. Every time you up-level into a leadership position, a bigger and bigger leadership position, you are expanding your capacity to visualize.

So in a classroom, you are doing it at the classroom level. As a grade-level department chair or a leadership at your grade level or your department site, you are developing vision for your entire department or grade level. You step into a site leadership position, you are developing a vision for the site. You go into a district-level position as a district coordinator or a district director or a district assistant superintendent, now you are expanding your vision to include those departments district-wide. And then you get to the superintendency, and now you are developing a vision for an entire district.

Past that, you can look at any leaders in any organization. As you move up in the leadership positions, you are expanding how much visionary work that is required of you. You create this vision, you map it out, you plan it out, and then you have to execute it. But you are getting paid not to just lead, you are getting paid to be a visionary, to inspire others to develop a vision for themselves and plan it and map it out and execute it for themselves. One that is hopefully in alignment with the entire vision, with your vision as the leader.

You want to communicate that vision with conviction and drive and authenticity, because the authenticity is what connects people to the vision. You have to learn that as a skill, how to communicate with conviction and drive and authenticity. You have to present possibilities for people to inspire them when people feel stuck, or they feel like they are in the grind and they cannot see out of their tunnel vision or where they are stuck in that silo, you present possibilities and you tap into their potential for them.

You show them, you model this, you reflect, not just on things outside of you. A lot of times I caught myself contemplating and reflecting and ruminating over a situation that was externally outside of me. The situation at the IEP meeting, or the staff meeting, or the district level meeting, or what this parent said, or this grade level did, or what this teacher did or did not do in their classroom. Things outside of me, systems outside of me, lunchroom, dismissal. We want to contemplate externally what is happening around us.

But not only that, exceptional leaders, empowered principals, they reflect on what is happening internally. You deepen your awareness at an internal level as a leader. Just like you ask teachers to reflect on their self-efficacy as a teacher, and their identity as a teacher and their teaching practices, their teaching skills and their practices, internal practices. You are asking them to develop themselves. What is working? What is not?

What do you want to learn next? How do you want to develop? How do you want to grow? What is coming up for you?

We need to do this as leaders. And there are not enough people asking us as leaders to contemplate and reflect internally. You want to contemplate your purpose, intention, what matters to you, and why. Your leadership values. As a leader, the value that you provide is much more visionary than it is execution. It is a different kind of planning, a different kind of visionary work, and a different kind of execution.

Your role as a leader is now to inspire people into action, just as a teacher’s job is to inspire her students into action. When you take action, you model that. But the action that you are taking at a leadership level is different than the action you took as a teacher. But here is the fun thing. You do not throw away your teacher hat to put on your leader hat. You keep on your teacher hat

and you add on top of your leader hat. It is like caps for sale, except it is more than 50 cents a cap. I promise.

You are still a teacher out there, leaders. You did not turn in your teacher hat, your teaching ability, your teacher certificate, when you stepped into a leadership role, you are still a teacher. You are a mentor, a guide, a coach, a model. You provide support and access for other people as a teacher. Your grade level as a leader is now your fellow administrators and your office staff at your site. And perhaps you have an admin team at your site as well.

What was your classroom is now your campus. So your new classroom is your campus. Your new class is your staff. Your curriculum that you are learning to teach is leadership and human development. And you study that curriculum to know what to plan and how to deliver with execution, excellence, and precision to your students who are your teachers and your support staff. You hone those teaching skills and techniques and knowledge just like you did in the classroom.

You collaborate and connect with your fellow teachers, your admin, your fellow admin are also fellow teachers. You are prepared and planned just like you were as a teacher, and you are also open to teachable moments in the leadership role and the teacher role. You allow for flow and spontaneity within your systems and structures. So yes, as a teacher, you plan system and structures in your classroom, but you also allowed for some flow and spontaneity.

You were prepared and planned with your lessons, but also there were magical, teachable moments where you went off course, and that was the best thing you could have done. The same thing applies to leadership. Leading is teaching. Teaching is leading. And the bottom line for you, as a teacher leader, is to empower your students, to empower your teachers. You want to inspire and up-level their identity as a student, and they are a student of teaching, and you are a student of leadership, and you are learning how to lead them by teaching them how to teach, and they teach by learning how to be a student, and we all learn how to be better at what we do by being a student.

So in order to inspire your teachers to be the best versions of themselves, your teachers need to be also wearing their student hat. They need to be students and teachers, students of their craft and teachers of their craft. Your job as their teacher is to ignite their empowerment by inspiring their identity to develop themselves. And the way that you do that as a leader is you are also a student. You do not give up your hat as a student when you became a teacher. You are a student and a teacher. And now that you are a leader, you do not throw away your student hat and your teacher hat. You have your student hat and your teacher hat and your leadership hat.

Learning does not end when you graduate or obtain a degree. I find it so fascinating, the human mind, when it becomes an adult. When you graduate from college or get your master’s degree or your PhD, whatever degree that you have or your certification and obtain that degree, you have it, you have achieved it, accomplishment, that is not where the learning ends. That is where the learning begins. As a human, we are wired to learn from the day we are born until the day that we are no longer on the planet.

Yet, because learning is so uncomfortable from the beginning, it is hard to learn to walk when you are an infant. You fall and you fall and you fall and you go boompsy on your bum.

And you have got to get back up, and you scrape your knees, and you trip, and you fall, and you cry. Walk, but they do it anyway. They never stop trying until they do it. Babies get frustrated when they are learning how to put puzzle pieces together and their fine motor skills are not cooperating with their brain. Their brain knows which puzzle piece it wants to pick up and put it into the hole, but it cannot figure it out. And they scream and they kick and they throw things until they figure it out. Same with riding a bike. Same with learning to drive a car.

Everything we do as a human is learning. We are a student of life. We are a student of knowledge and wisdom and skill set and mindset and emotional regulation and communication and relationships. This is why we have the Mastery Series in EPC. There was always something new to learn. And being new at learning something, it is super awkward. It is super clumsy. It is really uncomfortable because of what we make it mean about ourselves and what we think other people are thinking about us, so we might feel a little embarrassed or we get a little frustrated.

That is because learning new things might also be very taxing to our brains and to our bodies. So it is awkward, and it is embarrassing, and it is clumsy, and we get frustrated, but it is also taxing mentally, emotionally, physically, to our bodies, to our brains, to our hearts. So we get confused. We get unsure. We get exhausted. And because of that discomfort in the learning process, now think about it.

We ask kids to do it all day, every day. Be new, try it again, fail, fail, fail in front of all your peers. And then as adults, we are like, well, that really sucked. I am not doing that ever again. I am going to not learn and be vulnerable and be awkward and clumsy and be embarrassed and frustrated in front of all my peers ever again. I am going to cocoon and just hide the fact that I do not know what I am doing. I am going to fake it till I make it.

It is because we are trying to avoid the emotion of embarrassment or the emotion of frustration or disappointment or awkwardness, clumsiness. And you can see this in our human culture. Some people, as soon as the law no longer requires them to attend a learning institution or a learning environment, they shut down. They avoid learning new things as much as possible. Other people decide that they have had enough learning once they graduate college or obtain that degree. Like, I will do just enough to get that degree or just enough to say I graduated college.

Other people, they are more comfortable and they will go all the way through the formal education system. And once they hit the max of that, they feel like, well, I have done it all. I have gone to my PhD or I do not even know the highest. I think it is PhD. But formal education has a beginning and an end. It is finite in the formal education world.

And then there are others who choose to be a student of life, who let life be the curriculum. They become a student of themselves, a student of humankind, of human beings, of human education. And as educators, we are in the business of humans. We literally develop humans, big and small, older or younger, all of them, every single day. There is always something to learn about being human. That is why people study it generation upon generation upon generation upon generation.

There is so much depth and complexity to the human experience, the entire learning experience, just to study learning as a human. That is a lifetime achievement award. We never run out of curriculum. Ever.

And in the Empowered Principal Collaborative, an EPC, we study the human experience to deepen your knowledge, your wisdom, your skill set, your strategies, your openness, your intentions, your mind, what it means to be a leader, a teacher, a student, from all perspectives. From the leader perspective, the teacher perspective, the student perspective, how it feels to be a leader, a teacher, a student, all the feels from the entire spectrum of emotions. In EPC, there is no emotion we are afraid to feel. We do not avoid emotion. We do not run from them. We do not hide from them. We lean into them.

So embarrassment has got nothing on me. Do you know how embarrassed I felt putting this podcast out into the world when I first started? I was horrified that my friends or my previous colleagues or my previous bosses would hear this and laugh and say you are the biggest joke on the planet. You were not a great leader. You were this, you were that, whatever their opinions were of me. I feared that.

I was horrified and my coach said that is the perfect reason to start the podcast. Because if you feel this way, there are thousands of other school administrators who feel just like you. The only difference between people who succeed and people who do not is that they feel that feeling, they lean into it, and they do it anyway. That is the only difference.

Successful people, successful students, successful teachers, successful leaders, they do not avoid emotion. They are not void of emotion. They are not void of fear, void of embarrassment, void of clumsiness, void of frustration, void of disappointment, void of failures. The opposite. They are full of it. They are full of vulnerability and failure and disappointment and frustration and so much embarrassment.

The fear. Think of the emotions that lock you down into fight-or-flight. Everyone feels those. You have the capacity to feel them. If you did not have the capacity to handle them, you would not have been gifted with them. Emotions are a gift. It is an internal compass that guides us.

So in EPC we study emotion. We lean into it and we leverage it as a tool, as a strategy to become stronger mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically, as a leader in our relationships, in our communication, in our identity, in our confidence. The decisions and actions of a leader, a teacher, and a student, we study them through all the lenses. Every lens, every angle that we can imagine, we look at how and why we make decisions and how we decide our approach and the actions we take in that approach and then we look at them. Did they work? Did they not?

Let us test a theory. Let us see if it works. Oh, did not work. Let us adjust. That is it. It is as simple as that.

We come up with a theory and a plan. We execute it. We evaluate it. What worked? What did not? What do we want to adjust and do differently?

Let us go. Oh, there were some emotions that came along with that. I have got your back. We support you. We love you. We care about you. We care about your experience as a leader and as a teacher and as a student.

We look at what motivates and drives us as leaders, as teachers, as students. We need to study all of the angles. What motivates students? What motivates teachers? What motivates us as leaders? What motivates us as a student?

Us as a teacher? From all different backgrounds, from diverse backgrounds, diverse experiences. We want to study the human experience.

EPC is a new learning experience. It is a new offer. It is a new type of learning opportunity. It is based on introspection. And what I love about it is that it is the fascination of the human experience. I am fascinated by humans.

I am fascinated by how we learn, how we think, how we engage, how we interact, why we do things, why we do not do things, why we do things we say we do not want to do and we still do them and why we do not do things we say we want to do but we still do not do them. Why is that? Study it. Be a student of it. And then you can be a teacher of it. And then you can be a leader of it.

EPC is designed to help you design and create your vision for yourself, for your career, and for those you lead. I want to help you learn how to lead and how to teach and how to be a true lifelong student. Not because you want things to be hard, but because you want to master them. You want to expand your capacity to handle everything that comes your way. To practice skills and strategies. To embody empowerment, curiosity, and delight. To love your life, love your job, love your students, your staff, your families, your community, your district leaders.

Can you imagine going to work and loving your district leaders instead of talking about them? I know some of you have great relationships, but on the regular, I get some feedback that says otherwise for some people. But I truly want you to learn this skill because it is delightful. I want you to be happy, to have so much joy in your life, to have energy, to have hope, to have charisma and focus, determination, empowerment. I want you to celebrate failures just as much as you celebrate your wins.

Let us hold space for one another when we hurt. Principals, district leaders, we need a space to be supported, to feel held, to feel understood when we hurt, when we ache, when we fail, when we lose, when we fall down, when we get publicly scrutinized, or publicly embarrassed, or publicly humiliated. We need a space. EPC the space. We listen, not to respond to you, but to understand you. As leaders, we want to listen to understand, not to respond or react, but to understand.

So, the doors for EPC, the Fall Dip’s session, they are open starting today throughout the month of October. If you want to sneak in, I am leaving the doors open for this month only. They will not open again until 2025. I hope you are coming. I would love to see you. I would love to support you, but I would love, most of all, to empower you.

Have a beautiful week. Take great care of yourselves, and I will talk to you next week. Bye! 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 351. 

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck. 

Angela: Hello, my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. I have a very special and dear guest on the podcast today. Her name is Wendy Cohen. She is an AP in New York City, which I think is amazing. She has been working with me for how long, Wendy? 

Wendy: Since spring of 2020. 

Angela: Yes, we have been on a journey together, and we’re so excited to have this conversation with you all today. Wendy has had some amazing gains, amazing wins, and we’re just here to talk about it and share with you guys the power of coaching, the beauty of coaching. Really, what I invited her on the podcast, in my heart, the intention of this podcast is to celebrate her success. She has so many things to share with you today, and we’re going to dive right in and talk about it. 

But really, my intention is to celebrate her life, celebrate her professional life, her personal life, and to invite you in, all of you as the listeners, into celebrating because this can also be your experience and her experience is just one of many empowered principal experiences. But hers has been so delightful and such a joy to witness that I wanted her to share her story with you in her own way, in her own words. So welcome to the podcast, Wendy. 

Wendy: Thank you. thank you for saying that. It is felt and deeply appreciated. Yeah, I think it’s really just a continuation or a summary of our last three coaching sessions that we’ve had toward the end of June and into July and integrating a lot of things that we’ve coached on over four years, but in particular, in the last six weeks or so. 

Sort of this theme of facing new challenges and feeling like you’re a novice and you’re brand new at something and growing through it and how your identity shifts through that process. Then as you move through, feeling proud about your progress. And, like you said, taking the time to celebrate and reflect and feel like we don’t do that enough as school leaders or in general. So it’s welcome as an opportunity to take a little bit of time to look back on the journey and feel like, wow, look how far we’ve come. 

Angela: Yes, it really is. I am actually working on that myself and going deeper in planning with intention my life in all of the aspects in business, in professional, personal relationships, health, just anything. I’m really shifting from this idea of like having a goal to creating a plan because a goal, to me, is like a to-do list. It’s like you hit it or you didn’t, you check it off or you don’t. It feels like it’s an experience that you have for a moment when it’s a goal, right? 

We’re going to talk about this because Wendy did something new in her life this year that it was a goal, but it really turned into a journey and into it’s an evolution. It was more of a plan and an identity shift. But a goal is I’m going to run this race. Then you check it off. I ran the race. I crossed the finish line. I started, I finished, I crossed it off. That’s a goal. That’s exciting for that moment that you crossed the line or maybe that day. You bask in the glory and then it’s gone. 

But the journey and the intention and the identity shift and the plan of becoming a runner who runs races, that’s a different approach to your life planning. So can you tell them about your experience? 

This has just been such a fun thing to talk with you because I am a former runner. I used to run long distance, short distance. I was really into racing, but I did not start running until I moved to California. So I did not start running until my mid-twenties, but it became such an integral part of my life until my body decided that running was maybe something I wasn’t going to do on the daily. But tell the listeners your experience, Wendy, of becoming a new runner, being a runner.

Wendy: The connection with coaching on the school leadership side and coaching in the personal side really came through in this running journey because there are so many lessons that I learned through coaching as a new leader that I applied to the running journey. Now having checked off my goal, but also gone through this whole transformation through the training months that I’m now bringing back to school leadership as well. It’s sort of feeding this cycle of building a new sense of self and this new identity and new confidence as a result.

But going back to the beginning of the running journey, I have so many friends and family members who run. They love it. It’s their life. My husband is a runner, and I’m someone who never even ran the mile in high school when we had to do the fitness test every year. I faked it. I walked, and I never got it.

Angela: I got sick. 

Wendy: Oh no.

Angela: It really made me sick. I ran, and it made me, they made us run like our senior year a mile. I was like I can’t do that. I physically got sick. 

Wendy: I never got it. It was just not something that I was interested in. Or when New Year’s resolutions come around, everyone’s like, this is the year I’m going to run a marathon. Never really crossed my mind to even add that to my list of goals or things that I was interested in. But this year I reconsidered it, and I said, you know what? This would be a way to challenge myself. Go outside of my comfort zone. Try something new. See if I like it. I might surprise myself and actually find out that I really enjoy it. 

Also to be able to have this shared interest with those in my community. My husband, my in-laws, his sister, it was part of this race. When they signed up for this 25K, now they signed up for it last year and ran in 2023. I said, nope, this is not the year for me. I’m planning a wedding. I have other things I’m working on. Not the time, but maybe next year.

So January 2024 comes around, and they say, we’re signing up for that race again. Last year you said you would think about it. I said, you know what? Let me give this a try. In the past, I would have thought there’s a steep learning curve. I have zero confidence as a runner, especially around people who do have experience with this. 

That feeling of being new at something and just being scared of that uncertainty, the lack of confidence, there’s certain lingo and jargon. I don’t know what intervals are. I don’t know what tapering is. I don’t know how to do the electrolytes and gels. There’s a whole world, a whole subculture of running that was unfamiliar to me that I was really afraid to explore, I think, because of that new feeling. This year I said, you know what? Let’s try it. 

Being new at something in general can be scary. I remember when I was a new AP, being very impatient with that beginner mindset and being new at something and wanting to know how to do everything right away, wanting to go from A to Z overnight and realizing that you don’t start by running 13 miles. You start by maybe walk and run one mile and that you do have to work to get there. So this being new as a runner, I thought, well, let me take what I’ve learned and try and apply it, go outside my comfort zone, and make it an opportunity to grow and expand.

I think when we talked about it in coaching, it was really a conversation about the fear of being uncomfortable, being worth going through that because the things that you might be missing out on and taking a risk knowing that it could be like an assessment of what the outcome might be on the other side of that risk. Am I going to feel embarrassed? Am I going to fall and scrape my knees? I did the fear of all those things. 

It’s worth going through that process of feeling uncomfortable because of what can happen on the other side. I think in becoming a new runner, I said, you know what? Let’s take this risk because it probably will be worth it. Let’s see what comes out of it knowing it will get easier. Knowing I’m not going to know how to do it right away, knowing I have to start with one mile and I would work my way up. 

But through coaching was able to sort of see how in the past, my experiences as a new leader and being new at things, being newly engaged, moving to a new apartment, all these things we’ve coached on over four years of becoming an AP, getting engaged, buying a car, moving to a new apartment, getting married, all of these experiences when I was new or in transition and realizing what could come on the other side of it.

I said, you know what? Let’s commit to this training cycle. Let’s go through these 14 weeks, pretty much 16 weeks with a little bit of a base building in the beginning there. I said you know what? We’re going to jump in, and we’re going to try it. 

Angela: It has been so fun to watch you go through being new in multiple facets of your life because with full transparency, being new feels scary. I think it’s scarier for adults than it is for kids. Like we do feel scared at certain things as a child in our lives, like maybe the amusement park felt scary for the first time or going to somebody’s house you didn’t know, those things. 

But also I think about kindergartners when they walk into a room, they are so excited for the new. They have a sense of humor with the new. Like if they don’t know it, they don’t feel embarrassed. They just ask, what’s this? What’s that? Can I touch this? Can I do that? Bringing that lightheartedness, that sense of humor, just being like, oops, sorry. I didn’t know. I’m new, right? Like having some levity around being new.

You did kind of a trail run. It wasn’t just, so when you said you fell down and scraped your knee, it’s not like you were just running and tripped. It was you were probably on a trail where there was some rigorous hiking or all of that.

But I just love watching you be new over and over again because there’s still that ledge o, as you’re making the decision, there’s this teetering of like, am I going to jump? Am I going to take the leap? Am I going to try the new thing? The fear never stops coming up. 

But what I’ve witnessed in you, Wendy, is the ability to like, I recognize this stage. I know that this feeling is temporary. I know that after I jump, after I say yes, and when I do commit to trying the new thing, being in it and falling and scraping, those things aren’t actually as bad as we anticipate they will feel because you know you’ve handled it time and time again. 

Buying the new car, that actually felt like one of the scariest things you ever did, right? Then the moving was another big thing. Then getting married was a huge deal for you. The process of allowing yourself to be a bride while maintaining the integrity of your school and leading a school, especially in a high power, high stakes situation, state, school, all of that. 

Being new in all these facets has really just blossomed you into a person. I’ve seen the identity shift in I can do hard things. I can handle anything that comes my way. I’m really okay with being new. Being new isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually what I want. I want to be new at new things. 

Wendy: Yeah, and through all of those experiences and coaching the mindset shift from this is so scary that I’m going to shy away from it to it’s an opportunity for growth and an opportunity for expansion and up leveling. This idea of if you’re not growing, you’re staying the same. I actually don’t want to stay the same. I actually do want to grow. 

Knowing, as you said, it’s like phase one of a transformation is oh, this feels a little sticky. Uh-oh, this is uncomfortable. But knowing that it will get easier and being able to take the time to look back and reflect, even on the little gains. Like when on my little running app, I would see it went from one mile to three miles and then from three to four. I was like, wow, I can run a 5k now. I couldn’t even run a 5k a month ago. 

I think seeing that little bit of progress and taking the time to look and see where you’ve come from through this conversation, even, and all the things that we just mentioned through what we’ve coached through over these last couple of years. It’s a nice reminder of like, I remember when I was in the new phase. Even going back to being a brand new teacher, a first year teacher. Like, yeah, like that was a hard year. I got through it. I even ended up becoming a school leader after all of that growth. 

Angela: Yes. I love the part where you were talking about if you’re not expanding, if you’re not trying new things, you’re stagnating. I think there’s a place where people are like what’s too much? Like, am I just going to live in discomfort every single day in order to grow and evolve? You can if you want to. But sometimes we reach a plateau where we take a moment and we look around, and we’re like, I know what I’m doing. I’m not new right now. Things feel really good. 

I say get on that little, I picture like floating out down the river, right? You’re in your floaty. You’ve got a refreshment in hand and life is so good. Take that all in. That’s a beautiful space to be in it. I don’t think consider it a plateau at all. I consider it the celebration phase. 

But if you only — like there is a moment where you start to feel stagnation. It shifts from like everything’s going so great. I love my life. I love my job. Everything’s going great. I think we’re wired as humans that dissonance comes back and there’s this little urge or this like desire for something new or different. 

We actually do want things to be new and different and exciting and challenging and fun. That being new is not all scary and bad. It’s actually engaging and exciting, and it’s curiosity, and it’s growth. So there’s both. There’s the growth. There’s running up that mountain, literally in your case, right? Running up those trails, falling, scraping. It’s that journey and that discomfort and the grit and the strength and getting up earlier, like feeling tired the next day, but feeling good tired. There’s growth. Then there’s the celebration. But eventually you’re right. That tickle of desire for the next growth does come in.

If you’re afraid, if that calling makes you feel afraid of the growth, there are people who literally stay in the same job at the same place for 40 years. that’s all they do. If that continued to feel good for 40 years, do it. But the empowered principals that I attract into my world tend to be people who are like this is fun for this amount of time. Then what else? And what else and what else and what else.

Wendy: Yeah. As I’m getting to know my own tendencies, we’ve coached over the years of how do you know that it’s an authentic one? How do you know when you’re just feeling kind of pressured, or you’re feeling that rushing pace? I remember moving into this apartment and being like well, in three years, we’re going to be buying a house. So I don’t want to buy a couch because we can’t get furniture now because I’m going to have to get new furniture. 

You’re like hold on. We just finished one transition and you’re already rushing forward to the next one. I had to learn that was one of my tendencies of okay, let me sit and bask in the moment of now of being in this apartment and not worry about is the couch going to fit in my house? Because the future is coming up down the line. 

I think going through the new leader process, that was a push year in the professional sphere. Going through the engagement and the wedding planning process, that was a push in my personal life and in that atmosphere. There was a reason that I didn’t sign up to do that run last year when I was invited to because I think I knew that I was expanding in a different way and was wanting to really be present in that aspect of my life.

In this newlywed year, deepening my connection with my new husband through this running journey, it felt like an aligned thing to do in this year, in this time. But notice I’m not searching for a house. I’m not looking for a new job. I’m not trying to do some of these other things because I think we can get on the roller coaster of what’s next, what’s next. 

Sort of finding the happy medium between I love my life, I’m soaking it all in, things are perfect and I love and accept myself just as I am now. I want to grow, I want to expand, I want to up-level. When the time is right, I’m going to have another push year in some aspect of my life to evolve myself and evolve my identity. I do have future goals. I would love to own a house. I’d love to start a family. 

Professionally, I may not be an assistant principal forever. When the time comes to make a transition, I think we’ll be coaching on it, but I’m sure I’ll be feeling into the timing. Does this feel aligned in this moment? 

For me, this year running, it was the time to finally give it a try after seeing other people go through it and knowing that it wasn’t always my challenge or it wasn’t always the right time. This did feel like an aligned time to take on this type of challenge and this type of personal growth. 

We’re school leaders. We’re kind of on the type A. We’re kind of in the personal development world. We’re life coaching all of our staff members on a day-to-day basis. We’re growing small humans in our schools. It’s very tempting to sort of sign up for every challenge and want to sort of fast forward the process on some of these changes. 

In this moment, I’m grateful that we’ve coached so much on the slowing down and the checking in and the why does this feel like the right time versus is it really coming from within, or is it an outside pressure? Is it judgment of myself? Is it perceived judgment from other people? Trying to really turn off the outside noise and really listen to my why and coming from within from me of why is this the time and what is my reason for wanting to do this? 

If it was just to be able to post a picture on Instagram at the end, that was not a good enough why to be coming home after a long day and putting on the shoes and going. You really have to want to do it for a compelling reason to sign up for a 25K trail race, which actually ended up being 17 and a half miles, not 15. But you don’t just do that because you feel like it or because you want to post a picture at the end. 

Knowing your why and knowing that it was an aligned choice, I think through coaching and being able to feel really confident with the decision helped me to be successful through the whole training. Not just checking off the goal, but evolving through the process of going through it.

Angela: I really love, and I want to reiterate something that you said where we are people that love the drive of the thing, right? We are goal-driven. We’re plan-driven. We are achievement-driven, accomplishment-driven. what burns us out faster than anything or what feels actually less fulfilling is to try and have push. I love how you said that like a push area. Like to be pushing in all areas of your life and being new in something all around in all aspects, that is what thins out the process. 

I love your like alignment with yourself. Where is the area I’m going to push this year? We don’t need to push in everything all at once. That’s where you get overwhelmed and discombobulated, but it ultimately, it discourages you. It defeats you. You feel deflated because you can’t be growing in every area all at once. But when you focus on one, it impacts all of the others. That is so, so powerful.

I wanted to reiterate that because we think we’ve got to be healthy and we’ve got to be the best parent and we’ve got to be the best partner and we’ve got to be the best principal and we’re going to do, that’s like New Year’s resolution energy. Then it fizzles because it’s too much. The brain’s just like, I can’t do, the body can’t do all of this. 

But when you focus on with intention, what’s my one area of growth that I want for me that matters to me this year? Maybe it is health. Maybe it is professional. Maybe it is personal. Being decisive about that and sticking to it, knowing there’s plenty of time and space for the rest of it.

Like last year was about the wedding and being a principal and being a partner. But the wedding was the focus, the new. Before that, it was the move. Before that, it was the car. Before that, it was the AP. Now this year was the running. This was the focus. Then you’ll choose something next year, which I think is, it’s a brilliant way. 

This is the concept that I teach in the Balance Mastery Program where balance looks different every single year, every single three-month plan you create, depending on your focus for that time of your life. 

Wendy: Yeah. I 100% agree with, as you said, the connections between these different areas of your life. Last year as I was planning a wedding, I was thinking to myself, if I can evacuate my building for a fire drill and have 500 people get out in four minutes, I can figure out how everyone’s going to get from the ceremony to the cocktail area and then from the cocktail area to the reception. So having gone through that growth as an AP helped me on my journey of the wedding planning. 

Now in this running journey saying to myself, well, I had to figure out how to do time management when I was planning a wedding on top of my job, and I had to figure out how to be more intentional with my time. Now I have to figure out how to fit training for this run into my life. 

Well, let me take what I learned through my wedding planning journey, through my new AP journey, and apply that to how am I going to fit this running training into my schedule. It all is integrated, and it all does apply. Because, at the end of the day, I’m one person, and I have 24 hours in my day, whether I’m wearing my AP hat, my wife hat, my runner hat. It did seamlessly kind of dovetail on all of the coaching we’ve done around expanding my concept of time and not having that scarcity mindset approach to time. 

Because training for a half marathon for 25K, if you’re running 25 miles a week, you’re dedicating four, five, six, seven hours, and that’s not even including eating enough, stretching before and after, all those extra showers, changing clothes, all the other things that go into it. 

I don’t think if we hadn’t coached around time so much when I was a new leader, or if I had gone through some of the other transitions that I’ve gone through, it would have come as easily with this new challenge in the running sphere, just knowing that so many of those coaching principals apply and crossover.

Angela: Yeah. Let’s talk, I was, you read my mind about the time management thing because people are all sitting here listening like, oh my gosh. Like I’m barely able to figure out how to fit work into my life, let alone any other kind of personal project, whether it’s for pleasure or just personal growth or gain. Just can you tell them the process of how you personally were able to do this? 

Wendy: In my 2023 fitness life was not a runner, but liked to think that I was someone who was kind of active. I like to go to Pilates. I would squeeze that in probably three times a week. So I was already making my health a priority to some extent. Now this was like expanding to another level of commitment to physical health. 

The good thing with growing as a runner is that you do have to start small, and that forces you to not overdo it right in the beginning. If I had tried to run five miles in the beginning, I probably would have gotten injured and would have gotten discouraged and just quit. So knowing that all I had to do was go out and do one mile, and it would take 15, 20 minutes and I would come home after. That was all I had to do. It’s kind of hard to talk yourself out of 15 minutes.

 Like if you can’t find 15 minutes for yourself in the day, it’s an opportunity to reflect and see like, how long am I on Twitter? How many hours a day am I looking at emails? How many hours a day am I spending doing things that maybe could be delegated or could be reallocated in another space and time or just done more efficiently? Staying up late instead of going to bed early and then being able to wake up early and having that time. 

So starting out small with that 15 minutes, I said okay, we can get one mile in. I would do that largely on the weekend, but I did try and incorporate it probably two days a week during the work week as well. Then as the months go on, when you start going from one mile to two miles and two miles to three miles and building upon it. 

Knowing that I didn’t have to go home and carve out 15 minutes, but I had to go home and carve out 45 minutes, I would sort of backwards plan and say okay, if I know that I need to run for 45 minutes after work, I’m not going to have time to meal prep on that day. I’m going to make sure that I take care of that on Sunday, or I’m going to make a double batch of this the other day. 

As that grew and then you’re doing eight, 10, 12 mile training runs, and that was like just a Sunday thing, I really made it a point to carve out that time for myself on Sunday and try and front load other things during the week, on the weekend, trying to just be more efficient. Working as a team with my husband made a big difference with that as well. I knew which days he was training, which days I was training. 

We tried to collaborate, but it did kind of force us to zoom out and take a bird’s eye view of the week and where my time was going and do a little audit of some of the ways that I could take time back. Whether that was leaving earlier so I didn’t have to sit in as much traffic and getting that time back when I came home, or perhaps some of the meal planning stuff for the weeknights or going to bed earlier so I would wake up earlier.

It was a little bit challenging in the beginning, but I’m actually shocked at how much time you have if you are intentional with it. When you are very honest and self-reflective, your phone does tell you how much time you spend on apps. I don’t need to be spending an hour on Twitter every day. That hour could easily go towards running, even if I’m using it professionally, even if I’m using it as a healthy outlet and not something like a phone addiction situation. It’s not an essential. 

If it’s a priority, and it’s important to me, and my values are I want to focus on my health and I want to accomplish this goal, and I want to be committed and dedicated to the training plan that I’ve made, you set up a calendar, you write the miles on it, you cross out each day and you go through and you say well, that was the priority. It wasn’t a priority to talk on the phone, to go on Twitter, to stay up late watching a show.

I was able to check in with my values and audit my time and find the time. Just the nitty gritty, knowing that I was going to be building it out over the months, it also helped. Starting small and then okay, what else can I reallocate? What else can I move around? How else can I find more time in my day and building it over the months? 

By the time I was running for four hours on a Sunday, when the race was done, I was like, I just got four hours back. Now look at all these things that I could do now that I have all this time that I’ve created and all this space in my schedule, just from it’s like a secondary bonus of having gone through this process of learning this new point of view about how I want to spend my days, my weeks, my months, and really that becomes your life. 

I mean, that’s my life over the course of 2024 is I spent all that time dedicated to improving my health, to running, and opens up so many new possibilities moving forward that I wasn’t even anticipating that as like a secondary bonus of this whole training cycle. 

Angela: Yeah, here’s what I hear. The theme that I’m hearing is once you decide, you make a decision that something is a priority and you put that first on the calendar. You’re like this is, it’s a non-negotiable. It has to go on the calendar. Then you reallocate, you redistribute the other tasks. 

What you find is that what you end up shaving off are things that were just kind of consuming time versus being the most intentional about the time. Again, there’s nothing wrong with being on social media or watching Netflix or any of that, as long as you’re doing it with intention, and it’s healthy. But when you do have a goal or you have a desire or you commit to it and you prioritize it. 

When that goes in first, it feels like it’s almost seamless or magical that like everything that needed to get done still gets done. But now this running thing is just a part of your new identity. It’s a part of who you are as a person. I’m a runner. It goes into my calendar. I’m a school leader. That goes into my calendar. I’m a wife. That goes into my calendar. 

Now, what I want to say is for those of you who are principals, spouses, maybe you’re caretaking for elderly family members, or you have young children, and you’re listening to this and we’re talking about prioritizing physical health and running or some kind of movement, physical movement in your life, but you are caretaking for young children, older adults, or you are prioritizing other things in your life. Here’s what I want to say. 

Again, be intentional with those priorities and do not use Wendy’s experience to beat yourself up. If you are prioritizing childcare or healthcare of a loved one and you’re thinking to yourself, well, I’m lazy or I’m not managing my time well enough because I’m not running on top of all of these things.

Remember, your push year, what you’re doing is you’re choosing to build up your relationship with your children and your parenting skills, maybe your spouse and your relationship and co-parenting with your spouse or caretaking. I’m just thinking of a couple examples here, but there’s a lot of things that we have to prioritize in our lives. I’ve done this personally. 

So I’m speaking to it because it’s very easy to hear Wendy’s story and say well, like, oh, it’s easy for you. You don’t have kids, or you’re young, but everybody has dualities in their life. Everybody has something else going on in addition to school leadership. Your extra things may be childcare. It may be adult care, healthcare. It may be planning a wedding. It may be going through a divorce. It may be moving that year.

Or I mean, there’s an endless realm of what would I call them? Pivotal moments or like chapters that you go through that you might not be able to go for a run. Just as Wendy said the year before, it was about her wedding. So she said maybe another time.

Just know this. If you’re in a chapter of child rearing or you’re in a chapter of parent care or you’re in a chapter of getting married or getting divorced or relationship changes, family changes, anything personal that’s big and you’re prioritizing it, be still with that. Be at peace with that. Remind yourself, I’m choosing to focus on this right now as my area of newness and growth knowing that it’s a chapter. It is a chapter and it’s a beautiful chapter. Some child rearing is a long chapter. 

Maybe, I know my sister and I are caring for elderly parents right now. I just went home to take care of my dad, and it’s a chapter, right? So I might not be going to the gym five times a week or four times a week anymore. It might be once or twice because my priority is my dad’s wellbeing and taking care of my sister, who’s the caretaker, right? 

So just know that everyone has duality in their lives. You’re never just a school principal. Even if you’re a single person with no children and no home, even if there’s not a lot of other attachments, there’s still the version of you that’s a principal, and there’s other things going on in your life. It’s okay to not be trying to do it all at once.

Again, I just want to reiterate, that is when you go a mile wide, you only go an inch deep. So I invite you to consider one thing at a time. If you have a wipeout year or a wipeout day or unexpected, unforeseen circumstances come up that re-shift your priorities, allow that.

One of the things my coach is teaching me to do, and I’m going to add this to the three-month planning because it’s so valuable. She takes the priorities, and she puts them on Post-its. Because instead of scratching it out or erasing it and say I failed. This was a wipeout. We’re never going to accomplish that. You just move it. You just move it. Because for Wendy, it was never that she said I’m never going to be a runner because she was planning a wedding. She just said, I’m going to move that to another chapter, to another timeframe. 

Where we get caught up in planning and balance and prep and expanding and growing and expanding our identities is we want it to be in this certain timeframe. We want it to happen right here, right now by this date. if it doesn’t, it’s this very all or none feeling. 

But that feels terrible. It’s discouraging. It’s defeating. It’s like graspy. It’s well, you guys know the energy where like I need this to happen right here, right now. We try to control and coerce and force things to happen. Versus this goal is on a Post-it, and the Post-it is going to keep coming with me. If I just find the space and time when I can actually prioritize the running and put it in three days a week and from 15 minutes to 45 minutes to however hours probably when you’re trail running, eventually it comes together into this moment of accomplishment.

Now, Wendy, I guess I want to transition to asking you tell them about. Actually, you have a great story about the actual experience because there was the anticipation of the experience, what you thought it was going to look and feel like. Then there was the actual race day. That’s a great story in and of itself. 

But I’m curious to know for you, what is your identity after the goal, right? The actual moment of goal was checked off, but there’s an identity shift in you. Let’s talk about your identity as a runner in future terms. Like, is it going to be something you continue to do? Is it just something I’ve done. I’ve accomplished. It was a one and done. Is it going to be this balance? Like, let’s first tell the story because it’s so good about the day of. Then I’d love to hear your thoughts on your identity moving forward. 

Wendy: Yeah. So as far as the actual race day, end of June, months and months of training and planning, I did my final longest long run, which was a full half marathon, 13.1 miles. Was so thrilled with that and was feeling like, you know what? I was consistently training. I showed up. I got to see the little chart on my app going up and up. I was proud of myself just for following through and committing to the plan. 

At that point I had sort of said to myself, you know what? Regardless of what happens on race day, I know that I got this far, and I accomplished the training. At that point, even after having run a half marathon and running 20 something miles a week and four days a week, all of this, I will say that I don’t know if I ever really took on the identity of and I’m a runner. I realize that sounds silly because if you’re running, you’re a runner. If you’re running four days a week, you are a runner. 

The same thing happened to me as a new AP as well, where I was like I’m still in this sort of mindset of I’m in this imposter syndrome mode, or I’m still transitioning from teacher to leader. I think I had to remind myself like if your job is an AP, and you come to the school every day and you’re a school leader, you are a school leader. 

So the same happened with the running of all right, I’ve gone through this training process. I’m a runner. I’m going to show up to this race. I accomplished this whole training cycle. I know I can run the distance. I’m proud of myself. Let’s see what happens on race day. Regardless of if I make any special time or anything, I will have succeeded.

Of course on race day, it was pouring thunderstorms, a tornado warning. The trails were completely washed out with mud. All the rocks were extremely slick where people were slipping and falling. I think one girl had to get stitches because she had fallen at some point during the race, like at mile 10 or something. 

So the morning of the race, I said you know what? The goal the whole time was just to finish and not get injured. That’s exactly what I’m going to do, whether it’s sunshine, rain, mud, freezing cold, regardless, heat stroke. We were sort of going in knowing that it wasn’t going to be ideal conditions and knowing that the times were probably going to reflect that. 

By the end of the 17 and a half that we ended up running, we’re soaked through to the bone. Our shoes were muddy. Like every step was like, I had to take my glasses off because I couldn’t see, obviously. The rain was all fogging up my glasses and the water droplets and everything. So none of that was what I had envisioned for how the day was going to go.

At the end, what we thought was going to happen was we crossed the finish line. We’d have a nice celebration. It was a camping situation. So we were going to camp out that night and have a fire and celebrate and have a few drinks with some of the other runners and connect. 

Of course we get back to the campsite after running and we say okay, let’s get out of these wet clothes and change. The tent is blown over. The poles are bent in half. We said I think we got to pack up and head home. That’s exactly what we did. So none of that celebration happened that night anyway. 

We go home. We had to cut our weekend short. We didn’t get to hang out with my sister-in-law and my brother-in-law and my nephew who all ran the race as well and drove from the other side of the state, six hour drive to get home. We unpacked the car. We’re hosing down everything because it’s covered in mud. The next day I said we didn’t really get to have our little celebration. We had gotten some fancy drinks or something, like a non-alcoholic cider, whatever. 

We said, you know what? We’re going to uncork this drink. We’re going to have a little cheers. We’re going to have a little moment, even if it’s not at the finish line with the other runners in Western Pennsylvania in the middle of this town where everyone’s doing the trail run. It’s a whole big deal. I said we’re going to have our own celebration at home because we still accomplished something. We still finished the race. It’s still something to feel proud of. 

Coaching with Angela actually even enhanced that thought to say, not only did you finish, you finished in spite of probably the worst conditions possible and didn’t get injured, didn’t get discouraged. I’m sure there are people who saw the weather forecast and said you know what? I’ll eat the $50 registration fee and just say whatever because I don’t really feel like going out for five hours in the pouring rain and getting soaking wet. We did it anyway. 

Just showing up for the actual race and finishing the same way, just showing up throughout training that alone is something to be proud of. So we had to kind of create our own new vision of what the celebration looked like. We had to change our expectations of what the race was going to feel like in the moment. But we made sure to find a little bit of time to celebrate and to have that standing on top of the mountain feeling at the end. 

Because I don’t want to say that we were denied that, but it just didn’t go the way that we envisioned, or we didn’t have the weekend that we had planned. Yet we still accomplished something great. We still set out to run a certain distance, and we did it. So we said we’re not going to miss out on our celebration. We’re going to still have that moment for ourselves. 

Angela: Yes. This is very important. Wendy and I just talked about this like this week. Celebration is very underrated, and it’s very easy to overlook it. But it’s the one thing that we actually want most when it comes to any goal, challenge, adversity situation. We want the celebration. We need to honor and acknowledge the hard work we’ve done. 

It’s like when you’re in a classroom with a student, and they’re struggling and struggling and then they get it. Oftentimes the kids kind of excited, they’re kind of in shock that they got it. They’re like wow, I just did that. You are celebrating the heck out of this kid because they stuck with it, and it was hard, and they couldn’t get it. There were probably tears and torn papers and eraser marks. Then they get it. When we celebrate them, it teaches them to celebrate them. We as school leaders must celebrate little tiny wins, great big wins, and all the wins in between. 

One of the things that you said, Wendy, that I also want to highlight is that you said you started with that one mile walking or half running. But you had an app that was reminding you of the progress. What your brain was doing was looking for all the evidence that it’s working, and I’m moving forward, and I’m on track, and I’m growing. It is working. The process of learning how to run a, was it 15 mile, 17 mile race? Was you start with walking one mile. 

In school leadership, the race is a race that never ends. Like there are some milestones, some beginnings and ends of school years, but your profession, it is the longest marathon of your life. You can look at the scrapes, the fails, the time that slowed you down. You can look at all of that and you can say well, I didn’t make it this time and look for evidence to kind of bring yourself down. 

Or you can look at the app and say I went from two to three today. Or like this was just the perfect running conditions this afternoon, or Saturday morning, like I really had a great time just running, just being free, like looking for all the little things to keep you motivated and keep you going. 

I wish we had an app. Maybe I need to develop one where we were like looking for the milestones because it’s easy to get bogged down in what isn’t working in school leadership, but it’s also just as easy to focus on what is. 

Wendy: I think it was easier for me to see those small gains with this running journey because every day I would check off my, I had a physical counter, and I would draw an X. I know some people would take those gold foil star stickers and just stick them right on the 1.5 today. Check. I don’t think I did that as much in my first years as an AP. 

It’s a good reminder that it might be my job to show up every day at work and be an AP, but I have finished four years now in the role, and I have grown. Maybe I don’t always take the time to look at that, but even through the journey going from lacking confidence and maybe my identity not really catching up yet. I know that now when I think about my day to day, I feel more confident with decision making and my interactions with staff and with families. 

I have fewer moments of sort of self-doubt and uncertainty in that imposter syndrome. The way I look at challenges now versus when I first started has changed. I’m less scared of not knowing something. I know that I’m still learning new skills, and it’s an ongoing thing in life to be new at something. It’s a pattern that’s going to continue and just gets easier every time you do it. Embracing the challenges, going outside your comfort zone, reminding yourself you can do hard things, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. 

The same way I feel proud of myself for sticking with the running, I also feel proud of myself in the ways that I’ve evolved as a school leader. Doing things scared, feeling like a novice, going for it anyway. Then seeing on the other side once you’ve done it that it wasn’t really about running the 25K. It was really about showing up every day and proving to myself that I could do the training.

Even as an AP, like getting tenure is one thing, but improving every year and doing things better every year and seeing the ways that things are getting easier. Wedding planning, it wasn’t about the wedding. It was about the process of going through the planning and evolving my identity and my relationship with my partner. 

In the future, I have goals of starting a family and becoming a homeowner, growing in my career. I feel a sense of confidence that I can do those things because I’ve taken the time to reflect on all these other challenges and seeing that I have done things before where I felt new and uncertain and moved through the uncomfortable emotions and gone through the process of coming to the other side of it. I think all of the different areas in which I’ve had different practice with this, it just feeds each other and helps it to become easier each time.

Angela: It’s so true. The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. We can focus on one area of being new, one little push area, one little growth. This is something I’m going to invite you guys to do. So this podcast is dropping around mid to late September. It’s the beginning of the school year. I invite you to decide what’s the one area of growth that I want, that I really want for myself. What feels most aligned to me? 

If you tune in, if you listen, it will come to the surface. Is it something professional? Is it something personal? Is it your health, your relationships, your finances, your relationship with your kids or your family? Or maybe you are single, and you want to date or you want to like expand your friendship circles or you want to expand your spirituality and connection with a higher power of your understanding. 

Pick one because when you pick one and focus on that, you’ll be able to see, just like Wendy did, you can apply the growth, the learning, the journey to all of the other areas. It’s how you expedite your identity expansion and what you feel is possible. So maybe it’s time management this year. 

Like in EPC, we have the six pillars. We’ve got time, balance, planning, relationships, leadership, emotional regulation. I also am adding communication. I think that’s an essential part of school leadership. Yeah. Just like the art of and mastery of communication with ourselves and with others. 

But pick one area and just try that for one year knowing it’s going to expand the other ones. Then you don’t feel so overwhelmed that you have to fix yourself or improve all of this all at once because that’s where we jump right into the overwhelm cycle. Then we spin, spin, spin out. So Wendy, oh gosh, there’s so much I know we could share, but do you have any like last words that you want to share with listeners, fellow principals just like you who are out there? What is it that you’d like to say and share with them? 

Wendy: I think the biggest takeaway is you might surprise yourself with how much growth and how much you can get out of something that at first really scares you and makes you doubt yourself, but stay with it because whether that’s taking a new job or accomplishing some other goal, there’s so much that can come out of that process of discomfort. We’ve coached over the years about not wanting to feel that discomfort, and I purposely did something that I knew was going to bring that on, and I don’t regret it one bit. I don’t regret it one bit. 

Angela: Yeah, I cannot wait to see what this year unfolds for you. Do you have any thoughts about what your push area is going to be for this coming year? 

Wendy: Not so much the coming year, but the current moment, we’re still planning a honeymoon, and that is a whole team process that there’s a reason that you plan a big trip after you get married. You learn so much from going on a big international trip together, and we haven’t even left yet, but the planning itself has been a very enlightening experience.

I think building on my health goals probably to get us to a place where we feel good about making other life transitions. I think feeling healthy enough to start a family, healthy enough to take on a challenge, whether that’s moving or taking a new position. I think starting with a healthy foundation is going to help in all areas. 

I kind of knew that going into the running process too I want to get to be the healthiest version of me that I can while I don’t have kids, while I’m not in a new role, when I’m not making up another big life transition, knowing that it was going to set me up for success with whatever’s next. 

Angela: Yeah.

Wendy: Right now is the honeymoon planning, so I’ll let you know how our trip goes in a couple of weeks. 

Angela: I cannot wait to hear about it. I can’t believe you’re going. It’s so exciting. 

Wendy: Not to mention that 25K trail run is going to help us to hike Machu Picchu, so it’s all connected. 

Angela: Yes, oh gosh. This is where it all blends together, and it’s such a beautiful experience to watch. I’m so honored to be your coach, I really am, and to call you a friend and to see you grow. I mean, it goes beyond words, like the emotions and the fulfillment I have in seeing you blossom and be this best version of yourself. You embody personal empowerment. You embody personal growth. 

What’s so cool about it is that you take this with you for the rest of your life. You can’t unlearn this, you can’t unknow this, you can’t undo this. It only expands you more and more. So I’m just so happy for you. Congratulations, not just on the run, but on the journey. 

Wendy: Thank you. When we started, and I was 29, and you said, you’re doing this work now because it’s like compound interest, and it’s going to pay dividends down the line. In four years of coaching, I’m already feeling different and seeing things differently. It just gets me so excited for how much more growth is ahead. With your support, it’s been not always easy, but it’s been a very rewarding journey. That’s for sure. 

Angela: So fun. It’s so fun. Thank you for your time on the podcast today, Wendy, and for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it.

Wendy: Thank you for having me. Best of luck with the new school year to all the other school leaders out there. 

Angela: Yes. Yes. Happy New Year, everybody. We’ll talk to you next week. Take good care. Bye. 

Hey empowered principal. If you enjoyed the content in this podcast, I invite you to join the Empowered Principal® Collaborative. It’s my latest offer for aspiring and current school leaders who want to experience exceptional impact and enjoy the school leadership experience. 

Look, you don’t have to overwork and overexert to be a successful school leader. You’ll be mentored weekly and surrounded by supportive likeminded colleagues who truly understand what it means to be a school leader. So join us today and become a member of the only certified life and leadership coaching program for school leaders in the country. Just head on over to angelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more and join. I’ll see you inside of the Empowered Principal® Collaborative. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.